Australia's Airwallex raises $13m Series A round

Melbourne-headquartered Airwallex was founded last year and became the first Australian start-up to join Mastercard’s accelerator program. It previously raised a pre-Series A round of $3 million in early 2016 led by Gobi Partners.

The premise of its service is to enable business customers to make and receive international payments at scale, while minimizing cost. The platform can support thousands of transactions per second, using a foreign exchange and payment engine and a transparent pricing model to avoid inflated margins and bring down market risk. It receives a fee for each transaction processed.

The new capital will support the release of additional payment tools and international expansion. Airwallex recently opened a London office and is planning one in Singapore, to complement its existing bases in Melbourne, Shanghai and Hong Kong. It will also collaborate with Tencent’s WeChat Pay service.

“Foreign exchange transactions pose a real challenge for businesses that operate across borders, and Airwallex’s solution has seriously impressed us in its ability to close the gap and allow companies to financially access markets that may have previously been out of reach,” Steven Ji, a partner at Sequoia, said in a statement.

Jack Zhang (pictured, center), co-founder and CEO of Airwallex, added that the company wants to eradicate the burden of international payments. "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.

Airwallex represents Sequoia China’s first investment in an Australian start-up. The venture capital firm’s Indian affiliate made its first foray into the country last month, leading a Series C round for online healthcare marketplace HealthEngine.

Australia has produced an assortment of financial technology start-ups, several of which have a cross-border angle. OzForex Group, a foreign exchange services provider backed by The Carlyle Group, Accel Partners and Macquarie Group, went public in 2013 and CHAMP Private Equity-controlled Pepperstone, another foreign exchange broker, is expected to follow suit.

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Early-stage
• Financials
• Technology
• Australia
• Sequoia Capital
• Tencent
• Gobi Partners
• Venture