2025 mid-year mission update: Building the future of global banking

The future of global banking isn’t a distant dream – it’s unfolding right now, and it’s borderless, real-time, and intelligent.

For years, I’ve watched legacy financial systems strain to keep pace with a world where entrepreneurs and startups go global from day one. Too often, I’ve seen teams held back by friction, cost, and missed opportunities, simply because the tools weren’t built for the way modern business works.

At Airwallex, we’re not just improving finance – we’re rebuilding it from the ground up. We’ve designed our infrastructure and software from first principles, combining cutting-edge technology with advanced AI to power a truly global financial operating system.

Our mission is to become the financial operating system for modern businesses, enabling them to scale seamlessly across borders, currencies, and markets, without the friction of traditional financial systems holding them back.

This is the future of global banking, and this is the future we believe in. Here’s what we’re doing to bring it to life:

Igniting our growth flywheel

Our recent commercial success continues to exceed expectations. Last month, we crossed $900 million in annualised revenue run rate (up 89% YoY), less than three months after hitting $800 million. We just surpassed $200 billion in annualised transaction volume, up 92% from the prior year. 

I’m also proud to see our customer growth is accelerating with 13,372 new transacting clients in Q2, up 84% YoY, while our customer acquisition cost dropped over 30% during the same period. 

At the heart of our business model is a powerful growth flywheel: As we continue to acquire more customers at a lower cost, these customers become increasingly engaged, deepening their relationship with us by adopting more of our products. As stickiness and engagement increases, so does transaction volume across our platform, resulting in accelerated revenue growth. This virtuous cycle propels our ecosystem, fuelling ongoing momentum and setting the stage for sustained long-term success.

Unparalleled global reach 

One of our competitive advantages is our global footprint, and it’s only getting bigger. With 26 international offices and more on the horizon, we’re strategically growing our presence in key markets to bring us closer to our customers and unlock new opportunities for growth.

• In Europe, we opened a new office in Paris and made a series of senior hires in London and Amsterdam. 

• In the Middle East, we made our first hires in the United Arab Emirates – in both Abu Dhabi and Dubai. We’re also growing rapidly in Israel, where we were one of the few financial institutions to be granted a payment service licence, giving us the ability to offer our full suite of global payment solutions to local businesses.

• In Vietnam, we acquired CTIN Pay to tap into the country’s rapid growth and digital transformation.

• In Latin America, we’re operationalising our payment institution licence in Brazil and getting ready for various product launches starting with payment acquiring in Mexico.  

• In Canada, we recently reported 390% YoY revenue growth, thanks to growing demand for cross-border solutions from local businesses. 

We have big expansion plans and our teams are hard at work ensuring we meet all the demands of local regulations to introduce new products in Japan, Korea, the UAE, and Latin America, while accelerating our go-to-market efforts in Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia. 

Expanding our extensive product suite

Since my last update, we’ve been busy expanding our product suite and launching in new markets. 

• Business Accounts: We first introduced Airwallex Yield in Australia last year, and recently brought it to Hong Kong and Singapore so businesses can earn competitive returns on their multi-currency balances, with no minimum lock-up period. With over $350 million in funds under management, we’re seeing strong results and are gearing up to launch in the EU, the UK, and the US in the coming months. We also introduced Limited Orders, enabling customers to execute currency conversions automatically when the FX rate hits their specified threshold, and Scheduled Conversions, allowing future-dated conversions for greater control and certainty.

• Spend: With Airwallex Spend, our global spend management platform, we launched major features that strengthened our product-market fit for large customers. Vendor Management and Purchase Orders now streamline the entire procurement process, from purchase request and approval to bill matching and payment. We also introduced HRIS integration and Multi-Conditional Approvals, enabling more robust spend controls tied to organisational roles and structures. 

• Payments: We're deeply embedded in the world of global e-commerce, but brick and mortar still accounts for around 80% of all retail. We see a lot of opportunity here, and are bringing our payments expertise to the in-person shopping experience with the Airwallex Point of Sale (POS) terminal, which helps businesses accept in-person payments seamlessly through our Payments Platform. We’re testing this in Hong Kong and Singapore and planning to launch in Malaysia, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the EU, and the UK soon. 

• Platform APIs and Embedded Finance: We also launched our Connected Account Console, a web-based portal that has been one of the top requests from our Platform customers. The Console is designed to help our customers build faster, own their own user experience, and give better insight into their money movement than anyone else in the market. 

We’re building the tools businesses need to thrive in the future of global banking. This includes a new upcoming suite of products to help modern businesses grow their revenue globally from day one. Right now we’re in beta testing and are getting ready for our global release in the coming weeks. We’re excited to share more soon.

Building an AI-first future

We’re also investing heavily in bringing AI into our product to better serve our customers. 

Our investment in AI is grounded in our vision to usher in a new era of automated, intelligent financial operations. We’re not just focused on incremental improvements, we’re reimagining the way businesses manage their finances. Throughout our products, we’re systematically embedding AI to eliminate manual processes, enable smarter decision-making, and unlock true autonomy for our customers. 

The future of global banking streamlines processes for customers, founders, and CFOs alike. Our Expense product features AI across the expense lifecycle: extracting data from receipts, categorising transactions, learning from team inputs, and applying rules automatically. 

I’m very excited about our Airwallex AI assistant, which is designed to become an indispensable partner for modern finance teams. It works by automating complex financial operations and transforming data into actionable intelligence, uncovering new opportunities for growth. This will empower our customers to run their businesses with greater speed, intelligence, and efficiency.

We’re also hard at work building a fully AI-native solution for founders and CFOs that handles finances from incorporation to IPO, from opening accounts and managing spend and billing, to bookkeeping, financial insights, compliance, and more. We’ll share more on this ground-breaking solution soon.

I've been very clear with my team. AI is a game-changer. We currently have a company-wide initiative for every team and every role to rethink how AI can transform daily work. Our teams are diving deep into workflows, eliminating inefficiencies, and rebuilding processes from their core, placing AI and automation at the heart of everything we do.

And this is only the beginning. With each AI investment, we’re heading towards a future where financial operations are effortless, intelligent, and autonomous.

Partnerships powered by shared ambition

Our value is magnified by who we build with. We entered year two of our partnership with McLaren Racing with the intention of taking things to the next level, thinking differently, challenging the status quo, and redefining what’s possible in both racing and global finance. 

Just over midway through this season, McLaren is building serious momentum, leading both the driver and team constructors’ championships. From our collaboration with Melbourne artist Reko Rennie on a custom-wrapped McLaren Artura supercar to our Shifted Perspectives campaign, we’ve built on this momentum through elevated activities around the globe and are proud to help drive their financial operations. 

We’re also thrilled to have joined forces with Arsenal Football Club to modernise their global financial operations as their exclusive Finance Software Partner. As part of the partnership, Airwallex will support Arsenal’s international supplier payments, employee spend cards, and expense management activities. We’ll also provide payment gateway services for their premium hospitality platform.

We’re not building the future of finance alone. Our partnerships with trailblazing, forward-thinking organisations show how shared ambition can accelerate change at a global scale.

Reflecting on a decade of growth and resilience 

As we approach our 10th anniversary as a business, I’ve spent more time thinking about the journey – all the ups and downs, all the challenges, and all the people who have played a role, big and small, in our growth. I feel an immense sense of pride at how far Airwallex has come – from a bold vision shared by a few founders to a global, mission-led platform that’s building the future of finance. This journey has been defined by relentless innovation, a willingness to challenge the status quo, and an unwavering commitment to enabling businesses everywhere to grow without borders. 

I see our recent milestones – from record revenue to new products like Yield and Billing, to our powerful partnerships and relationships with our clients – as proof that our mission resonates in every market we touch. Yet there's still so much that we want to build to help our customers. In many aspects it feels like day zero again, especially as AI continues to open up new horizons for us. 

Above all, I believe it is the resilience, grit, determination, and curiosity of our team, our relentless focus on customer needs, and our culture of never settling that have transformed challenges into opportunities. 

Investing in our greatest asset 

Building the future starts with our people. Everything we’ve achieved, and everything ahead, depends on having a team equipped to lead, learn, and deliver at the highest level. We hold a high bar for talent and performance because building something groundbreaking requires extraordinary people.

Our most recent employee engagement survey highlights positive momentum across most categories, with notable year-on-year improvements in sense of purpose and growth and development. When it comes to engagement, we’re seeing strong participation in our Airwallex Impact employee volunteer program. These efforts are a testament to our commitment to giving back through the 1% Pledge movement, and to building stronger connections as a team by creating meaningful, shared experiences.  

I’m also really looking forward to our upcoming 10th anniversary celebrations, where we’ll bring each of our regional teams together for the first time to celebrate in notable destinations. This will be a great opportunity to reflect on how far we’ve come, connect with colleagues, and look ahead to all that’s to come.

A bright future ahead 

At Airwallex, we’re building something truly special, and we have big ambitions. What we’re doing isn’t easy, but that’s what makes it worthwhile. With each challenge we overcome, we move closer to a world where businesses can operate across borders, efficiently and without limits. We have the vision, the tools, and the team. Now, we’re setting our sights firmly on the future of global banking, and building it one breakthrough at a time.

To all our customers, employees, partners, and investors, thank you for being on this journey with me and my co-founders to build a company where borderless innovation meets limitless potential. 

We’re hiring across nearly every team. Join us on our journey.