Airwallex
A global financial platform combining online payment acceptance, multi-currency accounts, FX, transfers, cards, invoicing, and subscription billing.
What changes when you choose Airwallex.
- Legal seller
- Your business is the legal seller
- Service model
- global payments and financial platform
- Pricing certainty
- country method based
- Review state
- growth · next review 2026-09-28
Who owns and operates Airwallex.
Product capability and company durability are different questions. This view keeps ownership, leadership, funding, and financial disclosure separate from the provider review.
- Founded
- 2015 Jack Zhang, Lucy Liu, Xijing Dai, and Max Li founded Airwallex in Melbourne in 2015 after encountering cross-border payment friction.
- Ownership
- Privately held, late-stage venture-backed company Independent company
- Headquarters
- Dual headquarters in Singapore and San Francisco; founded in Melbourne, Australia
- Team disclosure
- 2,300 people Airwallex publishes a current rounded workforce count on its company page.
Leads Airwallex at the July 2026 review.
Cofounder and senior operating leader of the global company.
Founders: Jack Zhang, Lucy Liu, Xijing Dai, Max Li
$1.8B total funding and $11B valuation claimed
The company publishes total funding and valuation figures alongside investors including Tencent, Sequoia, Hillhouse, DST Global, and Square Peg.
Named backers: Tencent, Sequoia, Hillhouse, DST Global, Square Peg
Private-company scale metrics without audited public accounts
The annualized-revenue, volume, funding, and valuation figures are company-reported and unaudited; they do not disclose current profit, cash burn, or product-level economics.
- Global payments processed
- $287B+ cumulative
- Funding
- $1.8B
- Valuation
- $11B
- Annualized revenue
- $1B+ company-reported
- Airwallex was founded in Melbourne to improve cross-border business payments.
- Raised an $80M Series B and reported a $450M valuation.
- Reported $1.8B total funding, an $11B valuation, and 2,300 employees.
US domestic online cards are 2.8% + $0.30; international cards are 4.3% + $0.30, with regional rates elsewhere.
Public US Explore-plan card pricing. International cards add 1.5%; subscription billing adds 0.5%; FX is 0.5% for major currencies and 1% for others. Local methods and regions vary.
Where it fits—and where it does not.
Strengths
- Payments and multi-currency treasury in one platform
- Public regional pricing in key markets
- Strong cross-border settlement and FX tooling
Limitations
- Rates vary significantly by country and method
- Billing adds per-transaction fees
- The merchant retains tax and compliance operations
- Cross-border online businesses
- SaaS with global treasury needs
- Companies settling multiple currencies
- You need a Merchant of Record
- Your entity or primary market is unsupported
Can you use it, and who can buy?
- Seller coverage
- Eligible businesses can open accounts in supported operating markets subject to entity, industry, and compliance checks.
- Buyer coverage
- Airwallex documents online acceptance across global card markets and more than 160 local payment methods, with multi-currency settlement.
- Product scope
- Online commerce, SaaS, marketplaces, platforms, professional services, and global businesses needing payments plus treasury tools.
What is built in.
- Checkout
- Hosted pages, payment links, components, APIs, SDKs, plugins, and mobile integrations.
- Subscriptions
- Simple and hybrid subscriptions plus usage-based billing, invoicing, trials, and dunning.
- Invoicing
- Global one-off and recurring invoices with reminders, credit notes, and reconciliation.
- Payment methods
- Cards, wallets, BNPL, bank methods, and more than 160 local methods by market.
- Payouts
- Like-for-like settlement into Airwallex wallets and transfers to supported bank destinations.
Who handles what.
| Responsibility | Primary owner | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Legal seller and customer contract | You | The business remains seller when using Airwallex Payments. |
| Sales tax, VAT, and product compliance | You | Payment and billing tools do not transfer tax registration or remittance responsibility. |
| Fraud, authentication, and disputes | Shared | Airwallex supplies risk and 3DS tools while the merchant owns configuration, evidence, and commercial exposure. |
| Billing, FX, and treasury operations | Shared | The platform supplies tools while the merchant configures pricing, currencies, and reconciliation. |
Questions to answer before signing.
- Which legal entity acquires and settles our transactions in each seller country?
- Which payment methods, currencies, capture modes, and recurring patterns are supported?
- What are the exact international-card, FX, refund, dispute, payout, and add-on fees?
- What tax registration, calculation, filing, remittance, and invoice work remains ours?
- What PCI DSS validation and checkout-security work applies to our integration?
- How are reserves, negative balances, account reviews, and payout delays handled?
- Can payment credentials, mandates, customers, and active subscriptions be exported or transferred?
- How do balance transactions reconcile to orders, fees, refunds, disputes, and bank payouts?
Plan the exit while entry is easy.
A dashboard export is not the same as a working migration. Verify these factors with Airwallex and a realistic destination.
- Export customers, products, prices, invoices, refunds, disputes, and balance transactions.
- Confirm whether saved payment credentials and recurring mandates can move without asking every customer to pay again.
- Map subscription intervals, currencies, anchors, trials, discounts, cancellation state, and legacy prices.
- Replace provider-specific checkout, portal, webhook, invoice, and entitlement behavior.
- Run old and new reporting in parallel until gross sales, fees, taxes, refunds, and payouts reconcile.
- Retain source records needed for accounting, support, disputes, and statutory obligations after cutover.
Sources and freshness.
Independently triple-checked against primary sources on 2026-07-29. Scheduled for review by 2026-09-28. Verify the linked source before making a production decision.
- Airwallex US pricing Reviewed 2026-07-29
- Airwallex online payments Reviewed 2026-07-29
- Airwallex payment fee models Reviewed 2026-07-29
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