As the fintech industry recovers strongly, such as ramp and stripe Dominating the headlines with eye-popping funding rounds and rapid growth. But Singapore-based Airwallex is not far behind. Co-founder and CEO Jack Zhang said that as of October, annual revenue exceeded US$1 billion, with a year-on-year growth rate of 90%.
during an interview wealthZhang said his company, best known for cross-border payments and foreign exchange, has diversified its product portfolio into a range of other products, including business bank accounts and spend management, making it not only competitive with Ramp and stripeas well as Mercury, Brex, Revolut and a who’s who of fintech giants. “We’re competing against too many people,” Zhang joked.
Airwallex still lacks the name recognition of its competitors, at least in the United States, but that may soon change as the company accelerates its push into North America and Europe. Founded in 2015, Airwallex took nine years to reach $500 million in annual revenue for the first time, but it took just one year to double to $1 billion. Zhang said that with gross profit margins of over 60%, Airwallex is quickly becoming a strong player in the U.S. market. valuable A funding round in May valued Ramp at $6 billion, while Ramp was most recently valued at $22.5 billion and Stripe was valued at $106 billion.
A spokesman said Airwallex decided to reinvest in the business after achieving positive cash flow at the end of 2023, but was aiming to become profitable again in the fourth quarter of 2025 wealth.
“A lot of the reason we’re successful is that we’re outsiders,” Zhang said. “We’re not part of the Silicon Valley ecosystem.”
Melbourne to San Francisco
Many fintech companies focus on one key product, often using it as a wedge to further expand into the company’s financial suite. For Ramp, it’s a corporate credit card; for Mercury, a business bank account; for Stripe, payment processing.
Founded in Melbourne, Airwallex later moved to Asia’s financial hub Singapore after launching in Singapore in early 2022. Zhang said given the relatively small Australian market, his company had to think globally from day one. Zhang said that while the initial focus was on cross-border payments, the company’s revenue is now spread across a range of products, with business accounts like Mercury accounting for 34% of its revenue, spend management 20% and payments 30%. Airwallex also offers its global licensing and service network to other fintech companies through API integration, such as facilitating the international expansion of Brex, Rippling and Deel. “Our real moat is the infrastructure we’ve built over the past decade, both on the regulatory side and on the financial services side,” Zhang said.
As Airwallex expands into North America, including opening a U.S. headquarters in San Francisco last year, Zhang admitted he won’t compete with the likes of Ramp for U.S.-focused customers. Instead, Airwallex is focused on companies that want to do business globally and need the ability to issue employee cards, open bank accounts and pay merchants in dozens of jurisdictions. North America and Europe now account for nearly 40% of the company’s revenue, up from zero a few years ago, Zhang said.
“If you are a U.S. company and you only do business in Ohio, you’re better off choosing Ramp,” Zhang said. “But if you’re a US company that wants to sell in Australia, Singapore, the UK, Canada, and you want to do it efficiently and you want to have banking, payments, spend and financial management all on one platform, then Airwallex can work.”
As with most other companies, artificial intelligence is top of mind for Airwallex, and Zhang is developing a wallet product that he says will serve as the infrastructure for global proxy payments. He said he hopes to scale the AI agency business to “several hundred million dollars” before considering an IPO.
The company also hired another stablecoin developer Lively area Although he remains skeptical that blockchain can solve the problem of global money flows better than existing options. “Merchant adoption is still very low and there’s no progress on the B2B (business-to-business) side,” he said. “I have 99 percent doubt, 1 percent chance.”