Airwallex valued at $2.6 billion in new $100 million equity round

In a continuation of its Series D round to fuel its global expansion for cross-border payment solutions, Airwallex has raised $100 million in capital, valuing the fintech at $2.6 billion.

The fundraising efforts were led by San Francisco-based investment firm Greenoaks Capital, which has made notable investments in other payments fintech such as Toast, Tilpati, Checkout.com, Brex and Stripe. Joining Greenoaks in this latest round are Grok Ventures, Skip Capital and ANZi Ventures (the venture arm of ANZ Banking Group). The funds will be used to accelerate Airwallex’s global expansion, explore new partnerships and continue with product and engineering innovation.

"It is so impressive to see Airwallex's relentless pursuit of rewiring clunky financial infrastructure and turning that into a simple and delightful product experience for their customers,” said Jeremy Kwong-Law, CEO and CIO at Grok Ventures in a release. “We are excited about the huge potential this team can deliver in the years ahead."

This latest addition to its Series D is on top of $40 million that was added in September and $160 million added in April 2020. To-date, Airwallex has raised roughly $500 million in equity which values the Melbourne, Australia startup at $2.6 billion.

The company claimed that its new valuation has nearly tripled in size in just two years since it achieved unicorn status (being valued at $1 billion) in its Series C round. which it completed in March 2019.

Past investors in Airwallex include the VC arms of banking groups, card and payment networks and more, based on company releases and data from Crunchbase, a website that tracks investments in private companies. Past investors include Tencent Holdings, owner of WeChat Pay, Sequoia Capital and Sequoia Capital China, DST Capital, Horizons Ventures, Salesforce Ventures (venture arm of Salesforce) and Mastercard.

Airwallex joined the Mastercard Start Path accelerator program in September 2016 and then began to receive equity funds from the card network in May 2017 in its Series A round.

Airwallex’s technology is used to power Mastercard’s push payment product, Send, as well as the Airwallex Borderless Card for businesses, in partnership with Visa, that was announced in February 2020. The Visa card, which was first launched in Australia with further global expansion plans, allows small business and enterprise customers to instantly generate and issue multi-currency virtual cards to pay suppliers in seconds.

One key driver behind such strong industry support for Airwallex is the payments technology that it has created to fuel cross-border payments for small businesses and enterprises. In 2020 Airwallex added a bank integration feed with cloud-based accounting software program Xero, added a small business reward program and launched payment card acceptance in Europe and the U.K.

"The world will only become more digital, and with more businesses than ever now operating online, Airwallex has proudly been at the center of this evolution," said Jack Zhang, co-founder and CEO at Airwallex in a release. "The additional investment is a vote of confidence in the global financial infrastructure we have built, as we look to empower businesses to grow without borders."

Currently, Airwallex has over 600 employees across 12 global offices and is seeking to fill over 500 open positions as part of its global expansion efforts.