# Airwallex

Airwallex is a multinational financial technology company offering financial services and software as a service (SaaS). Founded in 2015 in Melbourne, Australia and currently based in Singapore, the company is a financial technology platform providing cross-border payments and financial services to businesses through a proprietary banking network and its API. It also provides services and products such as business accounts, expense cards, and payroll, among others. It was Australia's third technology unicorn company overall. With a valuation of US$5.5 billion, as of 2022, the company processed $50 billion in annualized transactions.

## History
### Founding and growth (2015–2018)

Airwallex was created in 2015 in Melbourne, Australia by five co-founders. At the time, software engineer Jack Zhang and architect Max Li had invested in a coffee shop in Melbourne, and were finding cross-border payments for imports to be costly and time-consuming for a small company. Zhang was involved in designing the digital forex trading platforms for the National Australia Bank (NAB) and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ), and was inspired to provide a simple, cheaper service to small and midsize businesses. Zhang and Li partnered with Lucy Liu and Xijing Dai, fellow alumni from the University of Melbourne, as well as Ki-Lok Wong. With the founders investing a combined $1 million, roles included Zhang as CEO, Liu as president, Li as head of design, Dai as chief technology officer, and Wong as principal architect.
The Airwallex platform was developed to lower consumer costs on foreign exchange rates, and was launched in a closed beta trial stage in 2015. The company built a proprietary network with banks, such as Standard Chartered, DBS Bank and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, to handle local transactions. ANZ began providing transactional services to Airwallex in 2017, with both MasterCard's Send platform and Tencent's WeRemit service powered by Airwallex. In 2018, Airwallex moved its headquarters from Melbourne to Hong Kong and turned down a US$1 billion acquisition bid by Stripe. Airwallex closed the "second-largest fundraising round in Australian start-up history" in July 2018, netting $80 million.

### International expansion (2019–2020)

After a round of funding in March 2019 brought in $100 million from investors such as DST Global, Sequoia Capital, and Hillhouse Capital, Airwallex reached a valuation of US$1 billion, and became the "quickest company in Australia to reach unicorn status," as well as Australia's third technology unicorn overall. Press reported in February 2020 that instead of focusing largely on forex transfers, Airwallex was aiming to become a "neobank" akin to Salesforce, specifically the "AWS of financial services." In 2020, NAB was providing payroll and rental payment services to Airwallex. The NAB had previously cancelled transactional banking services for Airwallex customers in 2018. In 2021, Hong Kong unfroze $18.2 million in funds and released them to Airwallex after Hong Kong's High Court dismissed suspicions by the Hong Kong Police Organised and Serious Crimes Ordinance that two former Airwallex clients had used Airwallex for money laundering.

### Recent developments (2021-2024)

In May 2021, Airwallex received a license in the Netherlands, giving them access to the European market. Airwallex started operations in the US in August, and secured a license in Malaysia in September 2021. In November 2021, Airwallex raised an additional US$100 million, reaching a new valuation of $5.5 billion and bringing the total funds raised since 2015 to $802 million. In late 2021 it had 1000 employees in 19 locations. The company processed $20 billion at an annualized volume in 2021, and by 2022, that had increased to $50 billion processed in annualized transactions. Airwallex released a debit card with Visa in Hong Kong in 2021, followed by a release in the U.S. in 2022. Airwallex launched in Singapore in early 2022. In Oct. 2022, Airwallex raised another US$100 million as part of its Series E funding round, sustaining its estimated valuation of US$5.5 bln. CRN valued it at US$5.6 billion in Oct. 2022.
In Mar. 2023, Airwallex secured a third-party payment license in China through the acquisition of Guangzhou Shangwutong Network Technology, becoming only the second foreign company to have secured the license after PayPal. As of Aug. 2023, key markets included Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union, and Hong Kong. Also in 2023, Airwallex launched into Israel and Canada. In October 2023, Airwallex acquired a Mexico-based payments company, MexPago. The deal was made to help the firm expand its footprint in Latin America. Currently based in Singapore, Airwallex has a total of 20 locations and most recently had 1400 employees.
In 2024, Airwallex achieved an annual revenue run rate of $500 million.

## Products and services

Airwallex states its financial platform for businesses has features related to payments, treasury, spend management, and embedded finance.
Airwallex uses a proprietary banking network to handle local transactions, with machine learning in its SaaS products "[enabling] customers to... send money through local and international clearing networks" in around 130 countries. Beyond forex services, other services include online payments acceptance, bank accounts, borderless cards, and a suite of application programming interfaces (APIs).
According to the company, as of 2023 its software infrastructure is used by 100,000 businesses including brands such as Navan, Qantas, SHEIN, HubSpot, GOAT, Saturday Club, and Brex. Others in Australia and New Zealand have included Culture Kings, Kogan, Freelancer.com, and Camilla, while Israeli firms include PAPAYA Global and OurCrowd.