Significantly enhanced product capabilities and built its own ecosystem
It was learned that the one-stop cross-border payment platform “Airwallex” has officially announced the completion of US $ 160 million in Series D financing and the introduction of new investor ANZi Ventures With Salesforce Venture, old shareholders DST Global, Tencent, Sequoia China, Gao Leng Capital, and Victoria Harbour Investment continued to follow suit.
This round of financing will be used to accelerate the construction of Airwallex ’s global digital financial infrastructure and product research and development, expand European and American markets and the Middle East and other emerging market businesses to accelerate global business growth. In addition, Airwallex will also publish API products such as global local acquirers and gateways for enterprises, and further integrate the entire chain of cross-border payment, Connect the upstream and downstream service providers of payment, improve the localized product experience, and further expand the SME group.
Airwallex has been reported many times. Airwallex, established in 2015, was founded in Melbourne, Australia. It mainly provides platform enterprises with integrated cross-border payment solutions to meet the market demand of B2B and B2C. At present, Airwallex’s main business includes global collection, international payment, currency exchange, etc. Services include cross-border e-commerce, online travel, logistics, education and study abroad, financial institutions, digital marketing, online entertainment and other 7 fields.
The “Belt and Road” policy, consumption concepts and other factors have spurred the rapid development of cross-border e-commerce tracks, and the scale of the cross-border payment industry as its underlying infrastructure With the growth, the growth rate has stabilized in recent years.
reported , cross-border payment can be divided into To C (individual) and To B (enterprise) Two major parts, To C business includes personal remittance, payment, etc., To B is based on the different parties of the transaction, including B2B, B2C two transaction modes.
At the time of this round of financing, Airwallex co-founder Lucy Liu also accepted an interview with 36 krypton.
At the beginning of its establishment, AirwallexStarting with the foreign exchange business, it gradually developed into payment and collection services in 2017. Since last year, it has entered the stage of building the ability of exporting financial systems and platform integration.
Lucy Liu, co-founder of Airwallex, told 36 Krypton that Airwallex was first cut from foreign exchange when it was established, because the exchange of foreign exchange is of great significance in cross-border trade and has a significant impact on merchants’ costs and revenue. Based on such pain points, Airwallex has independently developed a foreign exchange trading system, which can obtain a competitive exchange rate through docking and cooperation with liquidity providers, saving users 90% of the cost.
When the company’s foreign exchange business is relatively mature, Airwallex gradually builds its own clearing network, intervenes in local clearing organizations in various regions, and cuts into the diversified business scenarios of customers, mainly serving small and high-frequency between companies. Payment and collection needs. The platform adopts the form of a virtual account, bypassing the agency bank and the SWIFT system for direct peer-to-peer settlement. The traditional wire transfer method adopts the SWIFT and correspondent bank models. The pain points are high rates, slow arrivals, and large exchange losses. Airwallex’s method can save a lot of intermediate fees and labor losses.
The rise of e-commerce and the opening of cross-border payment business license applications are the fundamental reasons for cross-border payment companies to take off. The construction of cross-border financial networks is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and has become a standard for testing startup companies. In this regard, Airwallex has obtained local financial service licenses or registrations in six countries and regions, including Australia, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan and Canada. The global clearing network is already quite large and has served more than 80% of cross-border services. For the head customers of overseas e-commerce, the revenue in 2019 has reached tens of millions of US dollars.
After the formation of three main business lines, Airwallex has been exporting system capabilities and more diversified products since 2019. There are two main products. First, it was launched in early 2019. It is an integrated payment product for platform customers. Scale.
“We found in the process of serving customers, such as non-financial head enterprises, after a certain stage of development, there will be demand for financial infrastructure. Platform-based enterprise customers have a large number of users, in addition to normal business transactions, Many times the platform will hope to serve customers through more financial means, similar to the relationship between Ebay and PayPal, “Liu Yueting said,” but for platform companies, self-built or outsourced construction of financial systems is very expensive both in terms of time and labor costs. Therefore Airwallex hopes to be able to export its financial capabilities to such platform-based companies. “
The typical customers that Scale mainly targets are platform enterprises with a large number of customers and one-to-many two-way payment settlement requirements. ScaleBy providing standardized API modules to help customers interface with existing financial payment systems, centralized management of upstream and downstream partners and customers. Whether it is a buyer, seller, customer or supplier, Scale can incorporate it into a unified platform system with the enterprise as the core, handle receipts, exchanges, transfers and payments in a standardized manner to achieve automatic and seamless flow of funds to enhance the enterprise The overall user experience of the platform. In addition, Airwallex also established a Compliance and Anti-fraud Professional Team last year, which has improved its anti-fraud, account verification and other risk control cooperation The degree of productization of the scale block also provides more services to customers through the API.
Another product is the “Airwallex Borderless Card”, an enterprise card payment product jointly launched with VISA during the Spring Festival this year. This product further expands the user’s payment methods and scope. Enterprise users can generate virtual cards on demand in real time on the platform, and can realize multi-currency payments to merchants in more than 200 countries around the world that support VISA within seconds, and support inquiries. Various transaction records, dynamically manage quotas, set account expenses and reconciliation. In addition, Airwallex has also reached strategic cooperation and business integration with Xero, a company that is a listed company in corporate services, which can help companies automatically integrate financial data and complete reconciliations.
The “Unbounded” virtual card can also be bound to the Airwallex e-wallet, support API direct connection, and realize multi-currency payment in batches. Combined with Airwallex’s remittance service, it helps companies save cross-border payment costs. This product first launched in the Australian market, this year will also land on other global markets, including China Hong Kong, United Kingdom, etc.
Liu Yueting said that this year, Airwallex will also launch card acquisition and other services based on this product, improve the end-to-end user experience, and further expand SMEs Customer groups. At present, Airwallex has officially launched the Airwallex cross-border payment applet on the WeChat platform. Customers can perform operations such as registration review, account opening and collection, and RMB cash withdrawal anytime and anywhere via mobile phones, further improving payment efficiency and user experience.
Over the past few years since the development of the cross-border e-commerce track, more than 100 cross-border payment startups have entered the market.From the collection and payment and currency exchange business, they have entered the stage of building a platform / ecology, providing users with a series of industrial chain services, such as VAT, supply chain finance and other business links. After this round of financing, how will Airwallex set the course?
Liu Yueting said that under the global economic situation, investment and financing and mergers and acquisitions in the payment industry are expected to continue to be active this year, and the industry has clearly integrated towards platform integration and end-to-end solutions. When it comes to the To B business, the cross-border payment industry still has a lot of room for development. On the one hand, Airwallex will continue to expand the breadth of the global payment network, such as the expansion of European and American markets and the Middle East and other emerging markets; In-depth development of experience, such as local wallets and acquiring business, are also directions for consideration this year.
In terms of teams, Airwallex currently has a team of more than 400 people, and more than half of its product technicians. The company has 10 offices worldwide, including Hong Kong, Melbourne, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing, Singapore, London, San Francisco, Tokyo and Bangalore.
Related reading