Fintech Airwallex joins Canva on start-up rich list
Started by University of Melbourne students, fintech start-up Airwallex is now worth more than $5.5bn.
Melbourne-based fintech Airwallex was started by students from the University of Melbourne and has joined the likes of Canva to become one of Australia’s richest tech start-ups, with its valuation ballooning to $US4bn ($5.53bn) following an oversubscribed $US200m funding round.
The company, featured in The Australian’s 100 Innovators List and the fastest Australian start-up to reach a billion-dollar valuation, is rapidly expanding globally and now has five engineering hubs, across Australia, The Netherlands, the US and China.
The funding round was led by Netflix and Amazon investor Lone Pine Capital, with participation from new investors G Squared and Vetamer Capital Management alongside existing investors including 1835i Ventures (formerly ANZi), Salesforce Ventures, DST Global and Sequoia Capital China.
Chief executive and co-founder Jack Zhang said Airwallex had now raised more than $US700m in equity to date. Airwallex, which allows other businesses to operate internationally by enabling quick cross-border transactions, has set a milestone target of reaching $US1bn in revenue in 2025.
“We are excited to welcome Lone Pine Capital and our new Silicon Valley investors. Their wealth of experience, foresight and successful industry track records are a significant validation of our business and global growth strategy,” Mr Zhang said.
“From the start, our vision has been to build a global financial operating system that will allow modern businesses to operate without borders.
“This additional capital enables us to scale our presence in North America, the UK, Europe and other new markets including the Middle East, South America and Southeast Asia, and become a dominant leader in global payments.”
Airwallex had posted year-over-year revenue growth of almost 150 per cent for the first half of 2021, Mr Zhang said, and processed more than $US20bn for a global client portfolio that had quadrupled in size.
It now employs almost 1000 employees across 20 locations globally, and is aiming to hire 100 engineers in Australia by the end of the year.
“Airwallex has a clear competitive advantage in the digital payments market,” said David Craver, managing director at Lone Pine Capital.
“Its unique Asia-Pacific roots, coupled with its innovative infrastructure, products and services, speak volumes about the business’s global growth opportunities and its impressive expansion in the competitive payment providers space. We are excited to invest in Airwallex at this dynamic time, and look forward to helping drive the company’s expansion and success worldwide.”
Mr Zhang said he wanted to expand Airwallex into a “one-stop shop” for supporting business growth globally.
Working as a technical lead for major banks including NAB and ANZ, Mr Zhang co-founded Airwallex with four friends in 2015, three of whom were also University of Melbourne alumni.
“We started the business by solving one issue, cross-border payments for businesses, but we want to become a one-stop shop with bank accounts, cards and potentially in the future cash management and lending,” he said.
“We’ve really evolved to becoming a modern financial services cloud for businesses that want to grow both domestically and internationally.”