Airwallex pivots to embedded payments infrastructure

This shift means Airwallex is moving up the value chain from cheap money movement to owning the day to day operating stack for global businesses. Instead of earning a thin fee when a customer converts currency once, it now makes money when that customer issues employee cards, collects in local currencies, reimburses staff, and routes payouts across entities. That is why cards and payments products can outgrow pure FX and become the main gross profit engine.

• The product is getting stickier because it sits inside real operating workflows. Customers like Deel and Brex can use Airwallex to issue local cards, settle expenses, and move funds between countries, which turns Airwallex from a transfer tool into embedded infrastructure inside payroll, procurement, and spend flows.
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• The economics improve as mix shifts away from standalone cross border transfers. Airwallex reached $130B in volume and about $700M in annualized revenue by March 2025, with gross profit growth accelerating to 78% year over year as cards and payments rose above 50% of gross profit.
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• Compared with Wise Business and Payoneer, Airwallex is serving fewer but much larger businesses and layering more infrastructure on top. In prior research, Airwallex handled about $1M in volume per customer versus roughly $66K for Wise Business and $15K for Payoneer, which points to a more enterprise, multi product motion.
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From here, the logical path is deeper geographic coverage and more local financial primitives in each market. As Airwallex adds licenses and acquisitions across Brazil, Mexico, Vietnam, Malaysia, and South Korea, it becomes harder to displace because customers can run more of their global money movement, card issuing, and treasury flows in one system.