Airwallex wants to overshadow in Stripe and Adyen with its integrated banking platform
In less than ten years, Airwallex has established itself as one of the most credible challengers to international payment giants. Founded in 2015, the Fintech built its own infrastructure by directly connecting companies to local payment networks. Today it allows you to move money faster, with fewer intermediaries, and at a lower cost.
But the value proposition no longer stops at flows. Airwallex has expanded its offer to become a complete banking platform, designed for growing businesses that operate internationally. Multidism accounts, corporate cards, mass payments, automated spending management, monetary conversions at the interbank rate, accounting connectors and customizable APIS. The company is not content to facilitate payments. It wants to allow its customers to control the entire finance function in a unified environment.
A financial sequence designed for global companies
Airwallex offers the instant opening of accounts in more than twenty currencies, with the possibility of receiving and sending payments in more than one hundred and ninety currencies. The platform also offers physical and virtual visa cards, remotely controllable and configurable by team or by entity. The company targets both scale-ups and multi-function groups with an integrated multi-entity logic.
Expenditure management features include supporting supporting documents, several -level approval circuits, category spending restrictions, and automatic rapprochement with accounting tools. Native integrations are offered with Xero, QuickBooks, Netsuite and other ERPs. The solution is accessible without code via interface, but also by API for companies wishing to automate their workflows.
A broader positioning than payment
Where Stripe remains focused on online collection and Adyen on omnichannel trade, Airwallex advances a more global vision. It presents itself as a centralized financial platform for all daily operations. It aims to replace not only payment solutions but also fragmented banking services, spending management tools like Pleo, and external FX connectors.
The strategy is based on a logic of complete verticalization. Airwallex controls its infrastructure, interfaces, APIs and orchestration tools. It also develops a model of proprietary language to automate certain financial functions, such as categorization, generation of reports or predictive cash management.
A financing tour to accelerate its European development
Airwallex raised 150 million dollars in capital, with 150 million secondary sales. This operation brought its valuation to $ 6.2 billion against 5.6 billion in its previous round in 2022. Funds will be used to strengthen the software offer, to accelerate expansion, especially in Europe, and to pursue investments in artificial intelligence. Airwallex has just opened an office in Paris with Mahmoud Labassi (Head of GTM & Sales France) in charge of EMEA development.
The company now serves 150,000 customers worldwide. It claims $ 720 million in annualized sales and a volume of payments of more than $ 130 billion per year. She has just opened new offices in New York, Toronto and Paris. Among its investors are Square Peg, DST Global, Salesforce Ventures, Visa Ventures and Lone Pine Capital.
