Building a Global Payments Platform with Airwallex's Jack Zhang

Airwallex's CEO on building a global bank and refusing Stripe

Airwallex is betting that a cross-border payments wedge can grow into a licensed global bank run as a technology company. More US businesses now earn revenue abroad, and the US and Europe are still a tiny share of the market. Zhang turned down Stripe to pursue that goal and treats the Rabois attack as a cost of rising visibility.

Takeaways

• Airwallex aims to become a global bank. Airwallex calls itself a financial operating system with about 2,000 employees, 300bn dollars in processed transactions, over 120 countries and close to 1.2bn dollars in ARR, growing 90% a year. Zhang wants it to rival Citi or HSBC.
• Cross-border FX payments were the wedge. Zhang started from his coffee business, where SWIFT transfers cost 30 to 50 dollars and FX markups ran 4% to 5%. He says US firms are insensitive to FX costs, and 40 to 50% now earn revenue abroad, up from under 20%.
• The US and Europe are still early. About 40% of revenue comes from the US and Europe, which Zhang says is under 1% of the addressable market. Airwallex plans to deploy one billion dollars in the US over three years.
• Zhang answered Rabois's attack with facts. Rabois called Airwallex a Chinese company that steals data. Zhang calls this fabricated and says it is regulated in over 50 markets including 48 US states, with Australian and New Zealand founders. Contracts state data residency. A new round and large customers followed.
• Early hiring errors and premature globalization hurt most. Zhang says his biggest lessons were early recruitment mistakes and going global before product-market fit. He still spends heavy time hiring, about 20 interviews a week, and says hiring global executives is about ten times harder than normal.
• He rejected Stripe to keep building a bank. Stripe approached around late 2018 or early 2019. Zhang was about three years in, faced a five-year lockup until roughly age 39, doubted he could build another startup, and saw Stripe as payments-focused while Airwallex wants banking.
• Zhang expects AI valuations to be rationalized. Zhang recalls 2021 rounds near 100x revenue that fell to about 10x gross profit, a 90% contraction. Akhund counters that AI firms like Anthropic are growing revenue tenfold. Akhund says Mercury raised at 125x revenue in 2021.

Views on handling FUD

• Suri says fear, uncertainty and doubt is a normal tactic in business and politics, and gives Trump as an example.
• Suri advises ignoring small rivals, while serious ones deserve a simple retort.
• Akhund says FUD is especially risky for enterprise fintechs, which answer to regulators and customers.