Setting the Record Straight: Our Commitment to Global Trust

Recently, a board member of one of Airwallex's direct competitors has taken to X to post patently false allegations about Chinese government access to sensitive information about Airwallex's U.S. customers, and wild and totally unfounded conspiracy theories about me.

These allegations are false. Nevertheless they have raised concerns that we have an obligation to address. While we pride ourselves on competing in the marketplace on merit and earning trust through our products, we will directly respond to claims that misrepresent who we are and how we operate. We do not engage in counter-competitive measures. Our growth strategy over a decade in business is to build something better, operate with transparency, and let the work speak for itself.

We also see this as an opportunity to introduce ourselves properly to our growing U.S. customer base and to the broader public. What follows is our full account: what we are, how we are built, and why the facts speak for themselves.

What We Built, and Why

In 2015, my cofounders and I launched Airwallex after running a small coffee shop in Melbourne's Docklands and experiencing firsthand how broken global payments were for small businesses when trying to import coffee beans from around the world. We got curious about why that was the case, and that curiosity grew into a company built to reimagine correspondent banking itself.

Global financial infrastructure has, for most of history, been a privilege of scale. Only large enterprises could afford the banking relationships, FX desks, and compliance teams to move money smoothly across borders. We built Airwallex to change that.

We are proud to be part of a generation of rapidly growing fintech companies born outside the U.S. where the core problem was the real cost and complexity faced by businesses and people trying to trade, pay, and grow across countries. That generation produced breakouts like Wise, Revolut, Adyen and Nubank. What we share with them is a common ambition to become the infrastructure, not just a middleman. That means applying for licenses, submitting to regulatory examinations, building direct relationships with central banks, and earning the trust of governments market by market.

Today Airwallex holds 85+ licenses globally, serves customers in 47 markets, operates as a licensed money transmitter in 45 U.S. states, and is a FINRA-registered broker-dealer. That is a decade of hard work and it is the foundation everything else is built on.

What This Platform Now Makes Possible

The stone importer in Dallas paying suppliers in Italy, Brazil, and India. The tour company in Massachusetts booking hotels from Iceland to Greece. The three-person truck importer in Arizona growing 12x in one year.

For businesses like these, a 3% FX fee is real money that could be reinvested into hiring, inventory, and growth, and to nurture the next great idea. Three days waiting for a wire transfer is more than an inconvenience; it's working capital sitting idle. Small and medium businesses are the engine of the American economy, and they deserve financial infrastructure that treats them that way. 

Today, Airwallex provides multi-currency business accounts, global payments, card issuance, and spend management — and soon AI-powered accounting — in a single integrated platform, operating across dozens of countries, with real money movement infrastructure underneath. Our vision is to give the 46,000 U.S. businesses we serve today, and the millions more we hope to serve, the same ability to operate globally that Fortune 500 companies have always had. 

Cheaper, faster, smarter and built by a team from Australia who thought relentlessly about the global market from day one.

Data Security and Global Operations

The payments and banking industry is a global one. J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Adyen, and HSBC, among many others, all operate with employees across countries and continents. This is the nature of building financial infrastructure for the new global economy. A conversation about how global financial companies handle data and security is a healthy and important one to have industry-wide, and we are glad to participate in it.

With regard to Airwallex, here are the facts:

• U.S. customer data is stored in the U.S. Like other global financial institutions, we have staff based in China and Hong Kong because we operate globally and these are important markets. But those staff cannot access U.S. customer data. This goes beyond what the U.S. government requires of global companies.

• Access to customer data across our entire organization is restricted to authorized personnel only, under strict least-privilege controls, with phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication required for all access and 24/7 monitoring in place.

Our commitment to security is reflected in our policies; in the architecture of our systems, in the global licenses we hold that require a level of oversight many fintechs have chosen to avoid, and in the investments we make to stay ahead of an evolving threat landscape. Our product and data security efforts are overseen by leaders with deep experience at Palantir and within Australian Defence; people who understand the gravity of national security and the technical requirements of protecting sensitive infrastructure.

Recently, we engaged Coalfire — an A2LA-accredited FedRAMP Third-Party Assessment Organization — to independently evaluate our controls, and Sullivan & Cromwell LLP to advise on privacy, cybersecurity, and national security compliance. Coalfire's published conclusion: Airwallex's data security program is "intentional, structured, and forward-looking," with controls that "go beyond minimum expectations." We are publishing their attestation in full here.

On Our Investors

Airwallex's investors include some of the most respected institutions in venture and global finance including Addition, Greenoaks, T. Rowe Price, Lone Pine Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Visa and Mastercard. Tencent also holds a passive minority stake of less than 10%, with no board seat and no information rights beyond those of any passive minority shareholder.

Our Economic Advisory Council reflects the same standard of trust. It includes former SEC Enforcement Director Stephen Cutler, former U.S. State Department Spokesperson and Navy Reserve intelligence officer Morgan Ortagus, former U.S. Senator Roy Blunt, and former Treasurer of Australia, the Hon. Josh Frydenberg.

An Industry-Wide Conversation

Major U.S. banks, large technology companies managing sensitive data, and payment networks all operate internationally and navigate the same geopolitical environment we do. It is the architecture of global commerce and it is how U.S. and international businesses access world markets.

The question worth asking across the entire industry is how payment companies can best support American business competitiveness while responsibly managing the risks that come with operating globally. That is a conversation the industry, policymakers, and regulators should be having together. Collaboration is more important now than at any prior moment.

As AI accelerates both the sophistication of cybersecurity threats and the pace of financial innovation, no single company or regulator can stay ahead of those risks alone. We believe the right response is an industry-wide one, built on shared standards and best practices that apply to everyone. We are already engaged with officials in Washington on these questions and we welcome that conversation continuing.

Why This Matters

I was born in China. I am a proud Australian citizen. I arrived in Melbourne as an immigrant at fifteen with little English and no safety net, and Australia gave me the education, the opportunity, and the freedom to build something. The United States represents that same promise, perhaps more powerfully than anywhere else on earth. It is the place where the world's best companies come to prove themselves, and it is the place I came to build Airwallex's future. We plan to double our U.S. headcount to more than 400 employees this year. After investing approximately $150 million in U.S. operations between 2020 and 2025, we plan to invest more than $1 billion between 2026 and 2029 to expand operations, attract top talent, and deepen our footprint nationwide.

Serving the U.S. market means competing in the most demanding financial services environment on Earth. We knew that going in and we welcomed it. Sophisticated investors, enterprise clients, and heavily regulated financial partners do not take our word for it; they conduct rigorous due diligence on our licenses, our security practices, and our data flows. We win their business because we welcome scrutiny and we stand up to it. 

The same uncompromising standard runs through everything we do. We have demonstrated that through an independent assessment and we will continue to demonstrate it through our actions.

The Coalfire attestation on Airwallex's data access controls is available here. For more information visit https://security.airwallex.com/