Tencent, Sequoia join $80m Series B for Australia's Airwallex

Other investors included Hillhouse Capital, Horizons Ventures, Central Capital Ventura, and Square Peg Capital, the latter of which provided a A$8 million ($6 million) bridge round late last year. The cross-border payments specialist, which was the first Australian start-up to join Mastercard’s accelerator program, has previously received backing from Gobi Partners, Gravity Venture Capital, Huashan Capital, and Billy Tam.

The fresh capital will be applied to new product development in Australia as well as a global expansion that will leverage existing bases in Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, and London. This effort will include a push into North America and support for UK companies reaching out to Asian markets. It will also focus on encouraging financial inclusion of small to medium-sized enterprises (SME) in Hong Kong, where the company will apply for a virtual banking license.

"As the pace and connectivity of the digitalized global economy continues to rapidly accelerate, the need to focus on foreign exchange and payments has become critically important for large corporates and SMEs,” Neil Shen, Sequoia China’s founding and managing partner, said in a statement. “We believe that Airwallex's continuous improvement in providing seamless solutions for this problem is eliminating the obstacle, effectively giving their clients a clear advantage in a hyper-competitive global market."

Founded in 2015, Airwallex offers services that enable enterprise customers to make and receive international payments at scale by connecting with third-party websites and process transactions using inter-bank exchanges. The company says its platform can process thousands of transactions per second and provide a cost-effective alternative to existing payment networks for businesses looking to automate and expand their international payment workflows.

In addition to the Square Peg investment, previous support for the company includes a $3 million round from Gobi, Gravity, Huashan, and Tam in 2016, as well as a $13 million Series A from Tencent, Sequoia, and Mastercard the following year. This precipitated the establishment of Airwallex as the Australian implementation partner for Tencent-owned mobile money transfer system WeChat Pay. The company has raised $102 million to date.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Australasia
• Financials
• Technology
• Early-stage
• Australia
• Sequoia Capital
• Tencent
• Hillhouse Capital Management
• Square Peg Capital
• Financial Services