The idea for Airwallex began in a coffee shop in Melbourne. Jack Zhang, a software engineer, and Max Li, an architect, had put money into the cafe. When they tried to pay overseas suppliers, they found how slow and expensive it was to move money across borders. The irony was that Zhang had spent years designing foreign exchange trading platforms for two of Australia's biggest banks, NAB and ANZ. He knew what the plumbing looked like from inside.
In 2015 they founded Airwallex in Melbourne with three others: Lucy Liu, Xijing Dai and Ki-Lok Wong. The five put in about US$1 million of their own money. Liu and Dai were University of Melbourne alumni. Little is public about where any of them were born.
The company also turned down a roughly US$1 billion acquisition offer from Stripe.
The early years were the unglamorous kind. The team had to build rails to local banks around the world. In 2018 the company raised about A$80 million, then one of the largest startup rounds in Australia. It moved its headquarters to Hong Kong that year, and it now lists Singapore and San Francisco as its headquarters. So Airwallex is a Melbourne-born company that grew up in Asia, and calling it a Singapore startup is only partly accurate.
It did not stay quiet. Soon after the 2018 round, NAB cancelled transactional banking services for Airwallex customers. The company also turned down a roughly US$1 billion acquisition offer from Stripe. In 2019 Hong Kong police froze about US$26 million amid a money-laundering probe. A court dismissed the suspicions in 2021 and US$18.2 million was released.
Then it took off. Valued at US$1 billion in March 2019, it raised again at US$5.5 billion in 2021. Annualised revenue reached US$720 million by March 2025, up 90 percent in a year. In October 2025 the company reported annual revenue of US$1 billion and US$235 billion in transaction volume. A December 2025 round led by Addition valued it at US$8 billion.
The pressure has not eased. In January 2026 Australia's financial crime regulator ordered an audit over anti-money-laundering compliance, and US lawmakers raised questions about data and China links.
For founders, the lesson sits in the order of events. The company began as a personal irritation, and they stayed with it through a bank cutting them off and an acquisition offer they refused. A payments company has to earn trust again every year.