A message from our CEO and Co-founder

I spent most of the first half of the year in Asia Pacific and the Middle East, not only meeting with our teams, but working to understand through first-person experience how the payments landscape is evolving, talking to customers about their pain points in managing their global businesses and how Airwallex can continue to innovate to solve them.

Product market fit is everything when building a strong, high-growth company. We look at several metrics to understand whether we are hitting the mark and transaction volume is a critical one. This measure of how many dollars are moving across our rails is a key indicator of customer activity and stickiness of the relationship. 

That’s why I’m thrilled to see Airwallex’s annual transaction volume hit the US$100 billion threshold this month – 73% growth YoY – a sign that our customers are growing their use of Airwallex across their businesses. Our annual run rate revenue is now approaching US$500 million, 25% higher than my last mission update in March 2024. These milestones, plus turning cash flow positive at the close of 2023, gives us confidence in the durability of our commercial model and the strength of our product strategy.

Most importantly, it tells me that we are making a true impact in our quest to help millions of global businesses to grow beyond borders. I’m proud of our 1,500 Airwallex colleagues around the world who make sure every dollar, dirham, ringgit, real, pound, peso, euro (and more than 100 other currencies) gets to its destination safely, securely, cost-effectively and friction-free. 

My co-founders and I started Airwallex to solve an international payments issue we experienced first hand as small business owners. That kind of experiential learning continues to fuel my approach to innovation and to the ongoing expansion of our product offer. That’s why travel is an integral component of my leadership approach. To that end, here’s some of my observations from the road:

First, China: Even amid geopolitical challenges, I feel more bullish on China than I did at the start of 2024. The country continues to dominate in e-commerce, and as one of only two foreign companies with an online payments license, we look forward to continuing to help Chinese companies to scale and reach consumers worldwide. 

Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are also ripe for modernisation into the digital payments space. In Japan, particularly, financial services hadn’t had much innovation in the last decade. I believe Airwallex can be part of changing that dynamic – helping both SMEs and large Japanese enterprise companies to better connect to their customers and the global economy.

Moving south to Singapore – The City state continues to attract best in class talent and offer a meaningful innovation community. It’s been a great fit for our global HQ since we made that move official in 2023, with revenue in the city state growing 690% YoY. Today our Singapore office is bursting at the seams with 200 team members and climbing. I’m excited to head back to the Lion City in September for the F1 race to cheer on our partner, McLaren Racing. 

Earlier this year, we announced our multi-year partnership with the McLaren Formula 1 team, one of the sport’s most iconic brands and it was a thrill to spend time in Melbourne in March for our first F1 Grand Prix as a sponsor of the McLaren Racing Team. As an Official Partner, Airwallex will support McLaren’s global financial operations through our treasury management platform and our cross-border pay-outs and settlement product suite. 

I’ve been settled in Europe since June, and kicked off the summer with a series of events in London. As I told the audience at London Fintech Week, London has bred some of the most successful fintechs in the past decade. It’s exciting to see the UK’s progress on A2A payments creating a consumer habit that is now building B2B expectations among businesses of all sizes for instant payments that build instant access to capital, even across borders.

This week, I head to the US, where I continue to be excited about our enterprise market penetration, particularly in embedded finance. Our Americas presence is rapidly expanding,  and has been a key contributor to the company’s success globally – revenue in the region is up more than 300% YoY.    

Progress against our strategy

At the start of 2024, I shared Airwallex’s strategic pillars – infrastructure + SaaS + People & Operations. I want to take a moment to reflect on how we have advanced in each of these pillars in the year to date.  

Infrastructure 2.0: Deliver the best financial infrastructure for modern businesses operating globally

Over our nine years as a business, we have amassed over 60 licenses around the world. We steward these with care, and take our regulatory relationships and responsibilities seriously. This infrastructure is critical to Airwallex’s ability to move money faster, more reliably and with a lot less friction than traditional institutions to meet the needs of today’s modern businesses. We hope to soon close our deal to acquire MexPago, a leading Mexican fintech, and are on track for expansion plans in Brazil, UAE, Saudi, France and Japan. 

Global trade is more important than ever, but the paths of supply chains and employment are shifting among rapidly evolving geopolitical pressures and opportunities around the world. Our team closely tracks these so-called reglobalisation trendlines, and works to get ahead of the needs many of our customers will likely face amid these shifts. I’m particularly excited about expansion into the UAE, where the regulatory path has matured considerably in recent years. In May, I spoke at the Dubai Fintech Festival and had a series of meetings with regulators in the UAE to explore expansion there and in Saudi Arabia. 

We are also excited about ongoing licensing conversations that will allow us to expand some of our popular products to more markets around the world.

One of our key points of difference is the speed our infrastructure provides, and we continue to strengthen this offer. At the close of Q2 2024, 90% of payouts were same-day, with 64% of payouts instant. Our goal, which we are on target to achieve by end of year, is to reach 95% of payouts settling the same day, and 75% instant. 

SaaS: Build the complete Financial Operating System our customers need to thrive in today’s globally-interconnected economy

We continue to bring the best of AI into both our products and the way we work as a team. Last year we launched our AI-powered Know Your Customer capability which reduces ‘false positives’ by 50% on average, while boosting the number of customers that pass through the onboarding process without human intervention by 20%. This year we are focused on using the considerable data we have collected from consumer and B2B payments to build generative AI systems that improve customer support capabilities and build a data copilot to empower data-driven decision-making for both customers and employees.

Leveraging generative AI to cull learnings from data patterns will help our platform work smarter for the CFO offices we serve through automated workflows and a more seamless experience in financial management – a game changer for global companies. 

From a product perspective, Australia continues to be a strong testing ground for products. New products like Spend and Yield are landing well (US$100M in funds under management for Yield in just six months since launching the product). Yield’s early success led to our expansion last month of Yield Retail in Australia with a lower minimum investment of just AUD10,000. Since the July launch, we’ve added more than 200 customers, increased assets under management by 20% and seen average retail investor deposits at 5x the minimum. These clear product market fit signals have accelerated our plans to offer Yield in many markets around the world. 

Just as we test products in Australia, we are also testing a new three-tier SaaS pricing model to simplify our pricing structure so customers can more easily utilise several products within their preferred bundle, rather than continuing to use and pay for products individually. 

Airwallex is the only company that offers customers an end-to-end global payments and financial operations platform that covers the broad needs of how companies get paid, manage treasury, and make payments across global markets. As the product range continues to expand, we can further fulfil our mission of empowering global businesses to grow. 

As CEO, one of my core goals this year was to modify our structure to prevent the growth of our team and product suite from slowing our innovation pace. It’s critical that innovation not be hampered by unnecessary process or management layers. Therefore, we recently restructured our product team to create small incubated businesses under three core product areas: Spend, Billing and Yield. The GMs appointed to lead these teams will have the autonomy and dedicated resources to operate at an increased velocity and build in focused accountability on these priority product areas. 

People & Operations: Cultivate a vibrant, winning culture 

We continue to dimensionalise our team and our offices. In 2024, thus far, we’ve expanded our footprint in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America, moving into a permanent US headquarters in San Francisco, opening offices in Austin and New York, and adding team members in Toronto and São Paolo. We also made our first hires in France, UAE and notably scaled our teams in the Netherlands and Israel. 

By the end of 2024, we will have added 400 new people to our team. Recruiting top talent remains a core focus and we recently launched a new career site to tell our culture story, discuss the Operating Principles that guide us and share opportunities to join the team. I want to build a culture where people feel motivated and rewarded, connected to each other and to our mission and are truly empowered to do some of the best work of their lives.

As we deepen our relationships with customers and partners, we have an opportunity to act as a behind-the-scenes ecosystem connector with a brand that stands for safety, security and reliability – and speed. I’m both bullish and excited about the possibilities ahead for our sector and for Airwallex. The market is vast and we have a long way to go. Thank you for being a part of our journey.