My 2025 reflections: Ten years to reach the starting line

Ten years ago, Airwallex was born from a simple frustration: the world was becoming borderless, but banking remained stubbornly local. 

That’s because traditional banking is domestic by design: anchored by local licenses, physical branches, and legacy systems that process money in batches. While many institutions call themselves global, very few are global at the systems level. Most are effectively a collection of local entities wearing a common logo – which means your business becomes a stranger every time it crosses a border.

We spent 10 years building the alternative: a single proprietary network where the world behaves like your home market. 

By unifying the entire financial lifecycle – accepting payments, managing funds, and making payouts, across currencies and entities – we’ve created a new category of global finance that moves as fast as the modern economy.

The 'wow' moment for our customers is the realisation that they no longer have to stitch together disparate providers to orchestrate their global operations. Instead of managing a fragmented stack, they find a unified flow. A business can move seamlessly from vendor onboarding and bill approval to automated transfer and FX conversion – all terminating in real-time reconciliation with their accounting system. 

For an eCommerce retailer, this means the ability to collect online payments in 130+ currencies and settle 'like-for-like' in more than 20 of them. By holding funds in their original currency, businesses can deploy capital directly to global suppliers in those same native currencies. This bypasses the forced, costly conversions that traditionally drain international margins, making it faster and less expensive to accelerate cash flow across borders.

This level of integration is why Airwallex is often misunderstood. The fintech ecosystem tends to think in verticals: you’re either a payments processor, an FX provider, or a card issuer. At Airwallex, we’ve collapsed those categories into one seamless global platform. That makes us harder to categorise and easier to underestimate; when infrastructure is this deeply integrated, its power isn't found in a single feature, but in the total elimination of friction.

As I look back on 2025, one realisation stands out: it took us a full decade of relentless building just to reach the starting line.

• Ten years spent securing 80+ licences and permits globally

• Ten years building a proprietary global financial network from scratch

• Ten years earning the trust of the world’s most ambitious businesses

In global finance, a decade of groundwork isn’t a competitive advantage; it’s the entry fee.

The foundations are now in place. The real transformation starts here.

US$1 billion ARR: The world validates our vision

If 2024 was about momentum, 2025 was the year of proof.

For years, many believed our model could scale regionally, but not globally.

In my 2024 year-end reflection, I shared our excitement at reaching US$500 million ARR. In October 2025, we doubled that, crossing US$1 billion ARR, reflecting 90% year-on-year growth.

This milestone signals three structural shifts:

• Global relevance: The Americas grew 171%, and EMEA grew 116%. We now serve 200,000+ customers worldwide, proving this is not a regional success story but a global one.

• Scale with discipline: Historically, we reinvested every dollar into building. Today, our execution is strong enough that we reached EBITDA profitability in Q4 2025, while still investing aggressively in growth. This profitability is a direct result of our infrastructure strategy. By removing third-party dependencies, we capture more margin, while providing a level of speed, cost-efficiency, and reliability that is impossible to replicate with a borrowed stack.

• Institutional conviction: Our Series G valued Airwallex at US$8 billion, a 30% increase in just six months. We are proud to welcome partners like Addition, T. Rowe Price, Activant, Lingotto, and Robinhood Ventures who share our long-term vision.

Product update: Expanding our unified global financial platform

Business Accounts

An Airwallex Business Account is a global account for modern businesses. It lets companies receive, hold, pay, and manage money in multiple currencies and geographies, all from one place – without needing to open bank accounts in every country. 

Money comes in through local account details, is held centrally in multiple currencies, and moves out through local and international transfers, all within one system.

From a user experience perspective, this removes the ‘mental tax’ of operating globally. You aren't logging into five different regional banks, juggling multiple security logins, or constantly converting exchange rates in your head. You simply look at one screen and see your total global liquidity at a glance. Under the hood, that simplicity is powered by an increasingly local, real-time global network. Over 95% of transactions now route through local payment rails across 127 countries, with around 94% settling the same day and a growing share settling in real time. In total, our customers can now move money to over 200 countries globally. As of the end of 2025, this infrastructure is processing over US$266 billion in transaction volume annually.

Over the past year, we materially expanded the depth and reach of our Business Accounts infrastructure.

We extended our Global Account coverage from 65 to 70 countries, enabling global customers to get paid like a local in Israel, the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, and Brazil. At the same time, the number of currencies customers can hold directly in their Airwallex wallet increased from 22 to 27, reducing the need for forced conversions and external accounts.

On the money-out side, our payout network also continued to deepen. Local transfer coverage expanded from 118 to 121 countries with the addition of South Africa, Cameroon, and the Central African Republic, while SWIFT transfer support grew from 150 to 207 countries and territories. In parallel, we added 37 new payout currencies in 2025, giving customers greater flexibility in how and where they move funds.

Beyond expanding coverage, we also improved the efficiency of our existing rails in 2025. By introducing lower-cost rails, we reduced average transfer costs by approximately 33%. In parallel, we upgraded key corridors to support faster settlement, including 24/7 local transfers in markets such as the US, Mexico, Brazil, and Malaysia, and faster settlement in others, including the UAE and Israel.

These infrastructure gains translate directly into customer savings. In 2025 alone, we estimate that Airwallex saved customers over US$1.2 billion through two primary levers: first, by routing cross-border payments over our local rails instead of traditional SWIFT and wire networks; and second, by delivering superior FX through our proprietary pricing engine and minimising forced conversions for users of our multi-currency wallet.

Our multi-currency Yield product also saw strong adoption as customers looked to put idle balances to work. By the end of 2025, funds under management were approaching US$1 billion, representing more than 6x year-on-year growth. As Yield expanded into new markets, including Singapore, Hong Kong, the EU, and New Zealand, and entered beta in the US, it continued to help customers transform idle balances into a source of competitive returns.

We also introduced Scheduled Transfers and Scheduled Conversions. Customers can now schedule domestic and international payments up to 180 days in advance or lock in FX rates up to a full year ahead in 20 available currencies. Together, these capabilities are turning the Business Account into a true global treasury hub, not just a place to hold funds.

Spend

Spend unifies corporate cards, employee spend, expense management, and procurement workflows into a single global control layer for modern finance teams.

Our global footprint has expanded significantly. We now issue cards to business customers in over 60 countries, with digital wallet support including Apple Pay and Google Pay available in 53 countries, enabling employees to spend compliantly wherever they operate.

This global, multi-currency card infrastructure is translating directly into customer savings. In 2025, Airwallex cards processed over US$8 billion and saved businesses more than US$150 million, primarily by avoiding forced currency conversions and embedded FX markups common in traditional card programs.

As Spend scaled globally, we expanded its scope beyond employee expenses to address the broader needs of procurement and finance teams. In early 2025, we launched Vendor Management, giving customers a single place to sync vendors from their accounting systems, manage vendor contact and payment details, and configure approval workflows for vendor changes – all backed by a complete audit trail for stronger controls. Vendor accounting rules now pre-fill key fields such as chart of accounts and tax rates, allowing bills to be paid faster and more securely using saved vendor payment information.

We then introduced Purchase Request and Purchase Order (PR/PO) workflows, enabling teams to raise and approve Purchase Requests, automatically generate Purchase Orders with configurable controls and AI-powered line-item matching, and match POs to bills to track approved, billed, and paid amounts. These workflows integrate directly with Bill Pay (for which transactions expanded 2.5x over 2025) and sync seamlessly with accounting systems including Xero, QuickBooks, and NetSuite, delivering an end-to-end procure-to-pay experience.

Alongside this expansion, we launched HRIS integrations (e.g. Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, UKG, BambooHR) to automate onboarding and offboarding of employees, AI-powered receipt matching to automatically pair uploaded or forwarded receipts and eliminate manual tracking, and Spend Analytics – a centralised dashboard providing real-time visibility into company-wide expenditure. The result is tighter control, less manual work, and better decision-making at scale, helping finance teams identify inefficiencies, reduce unnecessary spend, and materially lower the cost of operating globally.

Payments

Our payment acceptance infrastructure continued to scale in both volume and capability throughout 2025.

Coverage remains a core differentiator. We support card acceptance across all major schemes, enabling merchants established in more than 40 regulated markets to accept card payments from consumers anywhere in the world. In parallel, we continue to expand the world’s most comprehensive local payment method coverage, now supporting more than 160 local payment methods globally.

We also expanded currency flexibility for merchants. Customers can now collect payments in over 130 currencies and settle like-for-like with no forced conversions in over 20 settlement currencies, reducing FX friction and improving margin transparency.

As payment volumes scale across markets, merchants increasingly need to optimise not a single metric, but the tradeoffs between conversion, cost, and fraud. We built Optimize 360 to do exactly that. Optimize 360 is our AI-powered engine that continuously balances these three dimensions in real time. For thousands of merchants, Optimize 360 is already delivering a 2–3% uplift in payment success rates, recovering millions in revenue through real-time decisions made in under 100ms. It is a powerful example of the results achieved when global infrastructure and AI are built together. 

Additionally, following successful beta launches in Hong Kong and Singapore, we are now progressively rolling out our Airwallex POS solution globally. This expansion will allow merchants to unify their online and in-store payments into a single, seamless global platform.

We recently started piloting a new one‑click checkout product that lets shoppers create a secure wallet that they can reuse across any participating Airwallex merchant. For merchants, it removes friction at the most critical moment of the journey and helps lift conversion. For consumers, it turns repeat purchases across merchants into a single tap.

Building on our acquisition of OpenPay, we’re also enhancing Airwallex Billing to help businesses manage the entire recurring revenue lifecycle from invoicing to subscriptions – with usage-based billing coming next for our SaaS and AI customers.

Platform API and Embedded Finance

Our platform API and embedded finance business continued to gain momentum as more companies integrated Airwallex directly into their products. 

By the end of Q4 2025, we supported 234,000 transacting connected accounts, representing 149% year-on-year growth, as platforms increasingly chose Airwallex to power payments, treasury, and financial workflows for their end users.

In 2025, we launched the Connected Account Console, and in the second half of the year, expanded its capabilities to streamline payments activation at scale. Platforms can now monitor their clients’ KYC and KYB progress, payment method statuses, reserve structures, as well as respond to RFIs in one centralised portal. By improving visibility and control over account onboarding, platform customers can activate their merchants faster and start processing payments sooner. Adoption of our Connected Account Console expanded throughout the year, with 140 large global platforms now actively using the console.

As we reflect on 2025, we are particularly proud of our expanding partnerships with leading global enterprises and startups, including Bolt, Gusto, Turing AI, Whop and Qantas.

Developers are central to this growth. As AI accelerates how software is built, a broader spectrum of builders, from experienced developers and non-technical operators to AI-assisted ‘vibe coders’, are using Airwallex APIs to embed financial capabilities into their products and agentic systems more than ever before. This shift is broadening who can build with financial infrastructure, while raising expectations around speed, reliability, and ease of integration.

Looking ahead to 2026, our focus is on delivering best-in-class, AI-powered developer tooling that supports builders across the full lifecycle, from learning and testing to launch readiness, real-time troubleshooting, ongoing integration health, and intelligent recommendations that continuously improve performance and reliability. As financial infrastructure becomes increasingly programmable, our goal is to make building with Airwallex not just powerful, but intuitive, resilient, and trusted at scale.

The system of intelligence

Most AI tools stop at insight. Ours can execute.

Because we control the regulated movement of money, our intelligence doesn’t need to end with a recommendation – it can end with action. When an AI agent decides, funds can move instantly, compliantly, and globally.

Across our platform, we are now embedding intelligent agents that do more than analyse. They reconcile, route, optimise, and execute real financial workflows from managing liquidity to orchestrating payments across borders. 

A key entry point to this intelligence is our AI Assistant. From the moment a customer completes KYC, it helps reduce friction and accelerate time to value – guiding onboarding, supporting integration, resolving issues in real time, and helping customers understand how to transact with Airwallex more effectively. Early results are promising: customers who engage with the AI Assistant are 25% more likely to transact within 30 days of completing onboarding. Over time, it will also surface smart recommendations, helping customers discover the full breadth of ways our platform can create value as their business grows.

We are also preparing for the era of agentic commerce, building the regulated, multi-currency wallet infrastructure that will allow AI agents to autonomously transact and settle funds globally. With the support of our platform, AI agents can execute transactions autonomously on customers’ behalf. Airwallex becomes the infrastructure layer where global agentic commerce actually happens.

To make this scalable and durable, it’s not enough to ship AI capabilities to customers. We must also operate as an AI-native company ourselves. In 2025, we made that shift decisively. Today, over 90% of Airwallex employees actively use AI tools in their daily work. In engineering, AI-assisted development has driven a 95% increase in deployment velocity. And across operations, more than 75% of core workflows are already embedded with AI. This internal adoption compounds execution speed, improves quality, and ensures AI is not a layer we add but a capability we scale with across the company.

The path to US$10 billion ARR has never been clearer

We have a clear north star: one million customers and US$10 billion in ARR. The path to US$10 billion is no longer a ‘maybe’. It’s a roadmap. We are doubling down on three pillars:

Geographic blitz

In 2025, we extended our regulated footprint and local capabilities in 12 new markets, securing new licences and launching products across France, the Netherlands, Israel, Canada, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brazil, Mexico, the UAE, and more. 

We recently took another major step in our APAC expansion when we acquired PT Skye Sab Indonesia, finally bringing one of the world’s most dynamic economies to our network. Indonesia has the fourth largest population and over 64 million SMEs, but they’ve been trapped behind local, legacy walls for too long. By plugging their PJP Category 1 licence into our infrastructure, we aren't just entering a market; we are building a two-way gateway that lets Indonesian businesses trade with the world as easily as they do at home.

In 2026 alone, we will enter 10+ new markets. And we are investing US$1 billion in our US expansion (2026–2029) and over US$500 million into the UK over the next five years.

Our brand’s promise

We can no longer rely solely on the quality of our product. We must build a brand that earns the world's trust. Our partnerships with McLaren and Arsenal are not just sponsorships – they are reflections of our shared pursuit of excellence and high performance. 

There is a unique satisfaction in rooting for these partners as they win, knowing Airwallex is the engine powering their global ambition. 2025 was a historic year for McLaren, capturing their second consecutive Constructors’ Championship. In F1 racing, as in global finance, there is no margin for error. Seeing our partners reach the pinnacle of their sport doesn't just inspire us, it reinforces our own commitment to building a financial operating system that operates with that same world-class precision.

Bringing the ‘full breadth’ of Airwallex to our customers

Many of our customers join us to solve a specific problem, like getting paid, managing expenses, or expanding globally. But when a business moves its entire financial stack onto Airwallex, its Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) drops significantly. 

More than half of our customers now use multiple products, signalling our expanding PMF. But we want this to be the case with all our customers. Our goal isn't just to be a strategic partner; it’s to give our customers a competitive edge their rivals can’t match.

That commitment is increasingly reflected in customer sentiment. In 2025, our company-wide Net Promoter Score improved from 50+ to 60+, alongside rising multi-product adoption. In 2026, our goal is clear: to achieve and sustain an NPS of 70+ by continuing to raise the bar on reliability, breadth, and execution across the platform.

Building at scale: You can’t code grit

Building a global financial operating system isn't just an engineering challenge; it’s a human one. This year, we grew to over 2,000 people across 26 offices. These aren't just headcount figures – they represent a distributed intelligence that allows Airwallex to move with the global market.

To lead a team that spans every time zone, you have to live in them. Since I started spending more time in London, my days have become a bridge. I wake up with our APAC teams, drive strategy with our European hubs, and close the day with the Americas.

But I am not the only one keeping this pace. There is a pulse to this company that transcends any single time zone. It requires a resilience and intensity that runs through every team at Airwallex. Last November, as we gathered our global teams to celebrate our 10th anniversary, seeing the shared camaraderie reminded me that while our headquarters are now ‘dual’ (Singapore and San Francisco), our culture is a singular, relentless force. Whether I’m at a town hall in Melbourne or a boardroom in London, I see the same shared hunger – a team that doesn't stop until the customer wins.

The next decade starts now

After 10 years, our foundational build is taking shape. We have the infrastructure, the capital, the profit, and most importantly, the people to move from building a platform to transforming an industry.

Legacy banking isn't just slow – it's a tax on global innovation. We are dismantling the barriers that these institutions have spent a century protecting. We'll continue to build, iterate, and push the boundaries of what a financial operating system can be.

To our customers and partners: Thank you for being part of this decade-long journey. We're proud of what we’ve done, but we're even more excited about what we're about to do.

The foundations are set. The race has just begun.