Airwallex has raised USD 300 million in a Series F funding round, pushing its post-money valuation to USD 6.2 billion. The global fintech firm, known for its cross-border payments platform, is adapting to a more cautious capital environment while expanding its reach and product suite.
Backers in this round include Square Peg, DST Global, Blackbird, Airtree, Salesforce Ventures, and Visa Ventures, alongside several Australian pension funds. Half of the fresh capital came from secondary share sales.
This valuation is up from USD 5.6 billion in 2022, when investors including Square Peg, HongShan, and Lone Pine Capital contributed USD 100 million.
Speaking to 36Kr, Airwallex chief revenue officer Wu Kai characterized the valuation as deliberate in the face of a more grounded fintech market. “Maintaining this valuation is an intentional choice,” Wu said.
Investor focus, he said, has shifted since the peak exuberance of 2021. Instead of chasing sky-high growth projections, backers are now emphasizing product defensibility, durable business models, and scalability. “Proving the sustainability of market growth is now a prerequisite for investor buy-in,” Wu said, noting that the company expects its average growth rate to remain above 50% for the next five years.
Airwallex’s numbers support that confidence. As of March, its annualized revenue exceeded USD 720 million, up 90% year-on-year, while its global transaction volume reached USD 130 billion, compared to USD 50 billion in 2022.
The company holds licenses in more than 60 jurisdictions and serves 150,000 businesses across over 150 countries. About 95% of transactions are completed within hours or the same day, with 68% processed instantly. Its customer base nearly doubles annually.
Among its global peers, Airwallex is one of the most licensed fintech companies, with regulatory approval across markets including Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, mainland China, Japan, the UK, and the US, among others. Since its founding in 2015, the firm has evolved from serving Chinese cross-border sellers to building a global financial network.
Wu was measured when addressing speculation about a potential IPO in 2026. “This may not be our last round before an IPO,” he said. “2026 is simply our target for being IPO-ready in terms of internal growth and governance. There is no fixed date.”
The new variables behind Airwallex’s valuation
The latest funding comes as Airwallex navigates two major shifts. First is a diversification of its customer base. Originally built to serve Chinese cross-border businesses like Shein and software-as-a-service providers, Airwallex now counts “global local” firms as a core growth area, which refers to companies expanding into international markets from the Americas, Europe, and the broader Asia Pacific.
In 2020, Greater China accounted for more than 80% of the company’s revenue. Today, that share has fallen below 50%, with the Americas and Europe now contributing 30% and Asia Pacific—including Australia, Southeast Asia, Japan, and South Korea—comprising 70%. Wu said this was not a retreat from China but a move to unlock growth abroad. In the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, Airwallex has maintained a compound gross profit growth rate of over 250%.
“We didn’t intentionally scale down China, it’s just that we had to unlock new growth channels abroad,” Wu said.
The second shift is product expansion. Since launching its core infrastructure for money movement in 2017, Airwallex has expanded its offerings across the transaction chain. In 2020, it added card-issuing capabilities, with its “Spend” product enabling clients to manage all categories of global corporate expenses through a single platform.
Visa, one of its investors, was an early partner for this initiative. The jointly launched Airwallex Visa card now accounts for nearly 30% of company revenue.
Airwallex sees itself not just as a payments platform, but as an infrastructure provider. Its goal is to abstract and modularize global financial services, be it foreign exchange, acquiring, account issuance, and more, so businesses can plug them in like building blocks.
This modular approach mirrors how Amazon Web Services redefined cloud computing. In payments, Airwallex supports over 160 methods worldwide and lets businesses settle in local currencies to reduce forex costs.
Rooted in the Asia Pacific, Airwallex offers a local responsiveness that many Western fintechs struggle to match. Stripe, for instance, operates in China via Singapore and faces restrictions on data access in Hong Kong. That gap in on-the-ground understanding has made it harder for such players to support Chinese firms going global.
Airwallex has capitalized on that gap. During recent tariff shifts, GOAT, a sneaker marketplace, used Airwallex’s forward exchange tools to hedge margins. CurrentBody, a UK beauty brand, used its scheduled conversion feature currency conversions to time currency swaps ahead of new regulatory changes.
“In the future, global finance teams should operate with the agility of engineering teams,” Wu said. With cross-border payments expected to reach USD 150 trillion, Airwallex believes it has only begun to tap into the market. Its long-term vision is to serve as the financial operating system for international businesses, enabling money to move as seamlessly, intelligently, and instantly as data.
How AI could reshape the future of banking
Airwallex doesn’t view other fintech startups as its main competitors. Instead, it’s aiming to leapfrog traditional banks. In a fragmented global financial landscape, no single player dominates, creating an opportunity for disruption.
Artificial intelligence could be the key. According to Wu, Airwallex holds two AI-related advantages over incumbent banks: better data integration and processing capabilities, and a regulatory framework that enables more agile internal decision-making.
AI’s value lies in parsing complexity. Airwallex uses large language models (LLMs) to understand clients during onboarding and determine which services to offer. Its KYC (know-your-customer) tools, powered by generative AI, are said to improve accuracy and contextual awareness. For example, the system can distinguish between a website selling “champagne-colored dresses” and one selling Champagne, or between legitimate phone accessories and illicit electronics.
The company says these tools have cut false positives in half and increased account openings by 20%, without requiring human review.
With established systems for onboarding, support, expense management, and reconciliation, Airwallex is well positioned to integrate AI agents. “That means we can move gradually,” Wu said. “We already have a broad suite of financial APIs, and now we can combine them with AI agents to build real financial automation.”
In the SaaS era, businesses bought tools. In the AI era, those tools become part of an agent’s toolkit, delivering services autonomously.
That’s also where precision matters. Finance teams spend huge amounts of time reconciling accounts and tracking fund flows. AI can automate much of this, but only if accuracy is guaranteed. That’s the rationale Airwallex uses for deploying feedback loops between humans and machines, identifying high-impact use cases and adjusting where needed.
AI is also central to the company’s scaling strategy. When assessing new tools, Airwallex considers three criteria: technical compatibility, disruption potential, and user response.
Ultimately, Airwallex’s goal is to pioneer “AI agentic finance,” a model where AI not only supports, but in some cases replaces roles like CFOs. An AI agent could manage vendor relationships, approve expenditures, and handle invoice payments, taking over traditional accounts payable functions.
KrASIA Connection features translated and adapted content that was originally published by 36Kr. This article was written by Ren Qian for 36Kr.