Airwallex

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 into a coffee shop which they were operating in Melbourne. While importing supplies from China, they found cross-border payments to be costly and time-consuming for a small company.[5] Zhang, involved in designing the digital forex trading platforms for the National Australia Bank (NAB) and The Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ),[10] was inspired to provide a simple, cheaper service to small and midsize businesses.[5] 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,[11] roles included Zhang as CEO,[6] Liu as president,[5] Li as head of design, Dai as chief technology officer, and Wong as principal architect.[6]

The Airwallex platform was developed to lower consumer costs on foreign exchange rates,[11] and was launched in a closed beta trial stage in 2015.[12] 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.[5] ANZ began providing transactional services to Airwallex in 2017,[13] with both MasterCard's Send platform and Tencent's WeRemit service powered by Airwallex.[14] Airwallex closed the "second-largest fundraising round in Australian start-up history" in July 2018, netting $80 million[15] In 2018, Airwallex moved headquarters from Melbourne to Hong Kong[5] and turned down a US$1 billion acquisition bid by Stripe.[13]

After a round of funding in March 2019 brought in $100 million from investors such as DST Global, Sequoia Capital China, and Hillhouse Capital,[5] Airwallex reached a valuation of US$1 billion,[16] and became the "quickest company in Australia to reach unicorn status,"[17] as well as Australia's third technology unicorn overall.[7] Airwallex in September 2019 received a "no-consent letter" from the Hong Kong Police Organised and Serious Crimes Ordinance, freezing $26 million in the accounts of two former clients[17] over suspicions of money laundering.[18] After Airwallex applied to Hong Kong's High Court for judicial review,[17] in 2021, $18.2 million was released back to Airwallex after the defrauded firm, Ciklus, confirmed to police that Airwallex "was never involved in the fraud perpetrated against it."[19]

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."[20] After the National Australia Bank cancelled transactional banking services for Airwallex customers in 2018 as "part of a post-royal commission policy to limit exposure to low-revenue money services businesses," in 2020, the National Australia Bank again approached the company about collaborating, only to deem Airwallex's offer "not sufficient".[21][22] At the time, NAB continued to provide payroll and rental payment services to Airwallex.[21] In 2021, Airwallex released a debit card with Visa in Hong Kong[23] and then in the United States, in February 2022.[24]

In May 2021, Airwallex received a license in the Netherlands, giving them access to the European market.[25] Airwallex started operations in the US that August,[26] secured a license in Malaysia in September 2021,[27] and in early 2022, launched in Singapore.[28] In November 2021, it 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.[29] In late 2021 it had 1000 employees in 19 locations.[30] The company is currently based in Singapore.[1]

In October 2023, Airwallex acquired a Mexico-based payments company, MexPago.[31] The deal was made to help the firm expand its footprint in Latin America.