According to Fortune, Airwallex has crossed $1 billion in annualized revenue as of October with a remarkable 90% year-over-year growth rate, positioning the Singapore-based fintech to challenge U.S. competitors like Ramp and Stripe. CEO Jack Zhang revealed the company achieved this milestone just one year after reaching its first $500 million in annualized revenue, following nine years to reach that initial half-billion mark. With gross profit margins above 60% and a recent $6 billion valuation from a May funding round, Airwallex has diversified from its cross-border payments roots into business banking accounts and spend management, competing directly with Mercury, Brex, and Revolut. The company achieved cash flow positivity at the end of 2023 and targets profitability again by Q4 2025, while North America and Europe now contribute nearly 40% of revenue after being negligible just years ago. This rapid growth trajectory signals a significant shift in global fintech competition.
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The Infrastructure Moat Strategy
Airwallex’s business model represents a fundamentally different approach from its U.S. competitors. While companies like Ramp and Brex built their initial products around specific financial pain points—corporate cards for Ramp, business accounts for Mercury—Airwallex has been constructing global financial infrastructure from day one. This infrastructure-first strategy creates significant barriers to entry that go beyond software development. The company’s global regulatory licensing network represents years of navigating complex international financial regulations across dozens of jurisdictions, something that cannot be easily replicated by U.S.-focused competitors.
The revenue distribution tells the story of this strategic differentiation: 34% from business accounts, 20% from spend management, and 30% from payments demonstrates a balanced portfolio rather than dependency on a single product line. More importantly, Airwallex has turned its infrastructure into a B2B platform play by offering API integrations to other fintechs like Brex, Rippling, and Deel for their international expansions. This creates a powerful network effect where competitors become customers, effectively monetizing the very infrastructure that gives Airwallex its competitive edge.
Perfect Timing for Global Business Needs
The timing of Airwallex’s aggressive U.S. expansion coincides with a fundamental shift in how businesses operate. The post-pandemic era has accelerated remote work and distributed teams, creating unprecedented demand for financial services that work seamlessly across borders. While U.S. fintechs were optimizing for domestic markets, Airwallex was building for a globalized business environment that has now become the norm rather than the exception.
Zhang’s admission that “if you’re a U.S. company and you only have operations in Ohio, you better go with Ramp” reveals a sophisticated market segmentation strategy. Rather than competing head-on for purely domestic business, Airwallex is targeting the growing segment of companies with international ambitions from day one. This represents a massive untapped market—U.S. startups and SMBs looking to expand globally immediately rather than waiting until they achieve scale. The fact that North America and Europe now comprise 40% of revenue from virtually zero just years ago suggests this strategy is resonating with exactly this demographic.
The Profitability Calculus
Airwallex’s financial metrics reveal a company carefully balancing growth investment with financial discipline. Gross margins above 60% indicate strong underlying unit economics, particularly impressive given the capital-intensive nature of cross-border payments and regulatory compliance. The decision to reinvest cash flow positivity back into the business rather than immediately pursuing sustained profitability shows confidence in the growth opportunity ahead.
The 2025 profitability target suggests Airwallex believes it has a limited window to capture market share before larger competitors fully wake up to the global opportunity. This timeline aligns with Zhang’s comments about scaling the AI agents business to “a few $100 million” before considering an IPO. The company appears to be executing a classic land-grab strategy: use current momentum to establish market leadership in global business financial services before the space becomes crowded with better-funded competitors.
Redefining Fintech Competition
Airwallex’s success challenges the conventional Silicon Valley playbook that has dominated fintech for the past decade. Being “an outsider” as Zhang describes provides strategic advantages beyond just different perspectives. The company’s Singapore headquarters and global-first mindset have forced discipline in building products that work across regulatory environments from day one, rather than the common approach of building for the U.S. market first and internationalizing later.
The competitive landscape is shifting from product-specific battles to platform wars. While Ramp excels at spend management and Stripe dominates payments processing, Airwallex offers an integrated platform that spans banking, payments, spend, and treasury management across multiple countries. For businesses with international operations, the convenience of a single platform likely outweighs best-in-class individual solutions that don’t work well together across borders. This positions Airwallex not just as another fintech competitor, but as the potential operating system for globally distributed businesses.
Strategic Challenges Ahead
Despite the impressive growth, Airwallex faces significant headwinds. The company’s cautious approach to blockchain and stablecoins—Zhang’s “99% skeptical” stance—could prove problematic if B2B adoption of digital assets accelerates faster than anticipated. Meanwhile, U.S. competitors are not standing still; both Stripe and Ramp have been expanding their international capabilities, and their massive war chests ($106 billion and $22.5 billion valuations respectively) provide ample resources to compete on Airwallex’s turf.
The company’s success will ultimately depend on execution speed and maintaining its infrastructure advantage. As more businesses become globally distributed by default rather than by exception, Airwallex’s timing appears prescient. However, turning a $6 billion company into a true challenger to $100 billion giants requires flawless execution through the next phase of growth, particularly as it balances AI innovation with core business expansion and navigates the path to public markets.
