Airwallex: Building a Global Payments Company From Melbourne

Airwallex is the counterexample to the argument that Australian startups must move offshore to build global businesses in regulated industries. Cross-border payments requires licences in every jurisdiction, banking relationships, compliance infrastructure and capital — the opposite of a self-serve software model. Airwallex built that from Melbourne and is now competing directly with the largest global payments companies. This article covers how, and where the risks are.

What problem does Airwallex solve?

The cost and friction of moving money across borders for businesses that are not large enough to negotiate with global banks. A company selling in five currencies traditionally needed accounts in multiple jurisdictions, paid substantial foreign exchange spreads, waited days for settlement and reconciled it all manually.

Airwallex provides multi-currency accounts, foreign exchange at institutional rather than retail spreads, local payment collection, card issuing and payment acceptance through a single platform and API. For an e-commerce business or software company with international customers, that replaces a stack of banking relationships with one integration.

The customer profile explains the growth. Businesses trading internationally are the fastest-growing segment of global commerce and the worst-served by incumbent banking, because they are too small for corporate treasury services and too complex for retail products. Airwallex targeted precisely the gap between the two.

Why does the revenue mix shift matter?

Because foreign exchange spread revenue is inherently vulnerable and product revenue is not. A business built on capturing a margin on currency conversion competes on price against every other provider doing the same thing, and that spread compresses steadily as the market matures.

Airwallex has moved deliberately away from that dependence. By mid-2025, more than half of gross profit came from domestic payments and card issuing rather than cross-border FX, with newer products including corporate cards, treasury accounts and its acquiring stack gaining traction among software platforms and e-commerce merchants.

The financial effect has been substantial. Gross profit growth accelerated to 78% year on year in the first half of 2025, up from 40% the prior year, and the geographic mix diversified with Americas revenue up 171% and EMEA up 116%, outpacing Asia-Pacific and lifting blended take rates despite currency headwinds. Growing gross profit faster than revenue is the signal that a payments business is maturing correctly.

Why is licensing the real moat?

Because it takes years and cannot be shortcut. Operating payments and holding customer funds requires authorisation from financial regulators in each jurisdiction, and each application demands capital, compliance infrastructure, governance, anti-money-laundering systems and a demonstrated track record. A well-funded competitor cannot simply buy its way past that timeline.

That is the inverse of a software moat. Atlassian’s advantage was that anyone could adopt its product instantly; Airwallex’s advantage is that almost nobody can replicate its permissions quickly. Both are durable, and the second is more durable in a downturn because it does not depend on continued product superiority.

It also explains the capital intensity. Airwallex has raised repeatedly — a US$300 million Series F led by Square Peg in May 2025 including US$150 million of secondary transfers, a US$330 million Series G in December 2025 led by Addition with T. Rowe Price and others, then the approximately US$11 billion round in May 2026 — because regulatory capital requirements and market entry costs consume cash that a software company would not need.

What does the dual headquarters decision signal?

That the largest opportunity is now in North America, and that the company is following it. Airwallex named San Francisco a dual global headquarters alongside Melbourne in conjunction with the Series G, with a commitment to deploy resources there, reflecting Americas revenue growth of 171% year on year.

This is a familiar pattern for Australian companies reaching global scale and it is not necessarily a loss. Atlassian retained substantial Sydney operations while listing on Nasdaq; Canva remains Sydney-headquartered while serving a global user base. Distributing leadership toward the largest market while retaining engineering and operations at home is a workable structure.

It does raise a policy question Australia has never resolved. If the country’s most successful technology companies inevitably shift centre of gravity toward the United States for capital, customers and talent, what does the domestic ecosystem retain? The answer so far has been engineering jobs, founder wealth that gets recycled into new ventures, and operating expertise — which our overview of the Australian startup ecosystem examines in more detail.

Who does Airwallex compete with?

Three groups with different advantages. Global payments incumbents have scale, existing merchant relationships and enormous compliance infrastructure, but generally serve either very large enterprises or simple online checkout rather than the multi-currency treasury needs of a mid-sized international business.

Other well-funded fintech challengers compete directly on the same proposition, several with substantial capital and their own regulatory footprints. Competition among them is genuine and take rates are under pressure, which is exactly why Airwallex’s shift toward higher-margin card issuing and domestic payments matters more than headline volume growth.

Banks are the third group and the least agile. They hold the licences, the balance sheets and the customer relationships, and they consistently under-serve the segment because it is operationally complex and small relative to their corporate business. That gap has been open for a decade and shows little sign of closing, which is the structural basis of the opportunity.

Why do valuations move so fast in private markets?

Because a private valuation is the price agreed with a single new investor for a small slice of the company, not a market-clearing price for all of it. A round at US$11 billion means one investor was willing to buy a minority stake at that implied value, which is meaningfully different from the whole business being worth that in a sale.

That is why private valuations can rise 50% in six months, as Airwallex’s did between its Series G and the subsequent round, while public comparables move far less. New investors typically receive preferences and protections that common shareholders do not, so the headline valuation overstates what ordinary equity is worth in most downside scenarios.

For employees holding options, this matters practically. A rising headline valuation improves the paper value of equity and says little about what it will be worth on exit, particularly if preferences stack up across multiple rounds. Anyone evaluating a startup offer should ask about the preference structure, not only the valuation.

What would an IPO look like?

Eventually necessary and not yet urgent. Airwallex has raised repeatedly at rising valuations and used secondary transfers, including US$150 million within the Series F, to provide partial liquidity to early shareholders and employees without listing. That defers the question rather than answering it.

The eventual listing venue is the more interesting question. A company headquartered jointly in Melbourne and San Francisco, earning its fastest growth in the Americas, with international institutional investors on the register, has an obvious pull toward a US listing — the path Atlassian took. An ASX listing would give Australian investors direct access to a domestically founded global fintech, which the market notably lacks.

The precondition either way is durable profitability. Payments companies are valued on gross profit growth and take-rate stability, and public markets have been unforgiving of fintechs listing on volume growth without a clear path to margin. Airwallex’s shift toward higher-margin products reads, among other things, as preparation for that scrutiny.

A closing observation about capital intensity. Software companies raise money to grow faster; regulated financial companies raise money because regulators require them to hold it. Airwallex’s roughly US$1 billion of cumulative funding across Series F, G and the subsequent round funds market entry, licensing capital, treasury balances and compliance infrastructure as much as it funds engineering and sales. Anyone comparing a fintech’s funding history to a pure software company’s is comparing two different things, and the fintech will always look more capital-hungry for reasons that have nothing to do with efficiency.

What does Airwallex mean for Australian fintech?

It established that the licensed, capital-intensive path is viable from Australia, which the earlier generation of Australian fintech success stories did not. Afterpay grew explicitly outside the credit regulatory perimeter; Airwallex built inside financial regulation across dozens of jurisdictions from the start.

That distinction matters for what comes next. The regulatory arbitrage opportunities that produced the previous wave are largely closed, and the remaining large opportunities in financial services require licences, capital and compliance capability. A domestic example proving that path is navigable changes what Australian founders and investors consider feasible.

It also demonstrated that Australian venture investors can back a company through the very long capital cycle regulated fintech requires. Square Peg led the Series F, and Australian institutional participation continued through subsequent rounds alongside international investors. Ten years ago the assumption would have been that such a company must relocate to raise at that scale.

Airwallex was founded in 2015 by a group that included Jack Zhang and Lucy Liu, reportedly out of frustration with the cost and complexity of paying international suppliers for a Melbourne cafe business the founders were running. Like Canva, the origin was a specific operational problem experienced directly rather than a market opportunity identified analytically — which appears with striking regularity in the founding stories of Australia’s largest technology companies.

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