Yahoo Finance BILLION-DOLLAR BABY: this Australian-born fintech is now a unicorn
Melbourne-founded fintech startup Airwallex has become a unicorn, joining the rare ranks of private companies worth more than US$1 billion (A$1.41 billion).
Airwallex revealed overnight that its third institutional capital raising round (also known as a ‘series C’ round) generated US$100 million, thereby valuing the business at more than the billion-dollar mark.
DST Global, which in the past has backed Facebook, AirBnB and Spotify, led all investors in Airwallex’s series C.
Airwallex co-founder and chief executive Jack Zhang told Yahoo Finance that it’s a testimony to how well his company’s going that DST Global would be interested in putting money in.
“They’re famous for backing businesses that are over US$10 billion. So they’re only interested in investing in businesses that have that potential.”
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Airwallex operates a system that allows cross-border financial transactions that are cheaper and faster than the traditional banking system.
The system is already used by large e-commerce and finance companies like Mastercard and China’s JD.com, Tencent and Ctrip – but its latest push is for small and medium business clients.
“We just launched our global account product, that allows businesses to instantly create overseas bank accounts for free – with up to 11 currencies and 50 countries. This is a product we’re targeting to help businesses of all sizes,” Zhang told Yahoo Finance.
Airwallex was founded in Melbourne in 2015 but last year moved its headquarters to Hong Kong.
The first two years were the toughest, according to Zhang, but the last 18 months has seen absolutely spectacular growth, claiming that revenue had increased 40 percent increase month-on-month over that period.
“We had about 80 people six months ago and now we have 260… And we’re going to have 400 people by the end of this year.”
With the latest US$100 million, Airwallex has now raised US$202 million in capital. Unlike Australia’s most famous unicorn, Atlassian, Zhang told Yahoo Finance there are no plans to go public in the near future.
A former ANZ and NAB foreign exchange solutions designer, Zhang said back in 2017 that foreign exchange was one area of fintech ripe for disruption because of the complexity and regulations.
“Armed with a growing number of financial services licences and partnerships across numerous jurisdictions, we aim to make international payments as cheap and simple as domestic payments,” he said at the time.
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