Airwallex Shifts Revenue Toward Higher Margins

The mix shift shows Airwallex is becoming less like a low fee money mover and more like the financial operating layer inside a business. Cross border FX is useful for winning the account, but card issuing, domestic acquiring, and treasury products let Airwallex earn revenue every time a customer pays an employee, runs software spend, collects from shoppers, or stores balances in its wallet. That creates thicker gross profit on the same customer base.

• The old engine was cross border transfers priced on a thin FX spread, around 0.2% in Airwallex’s early network buildout. The newer engine is domestic payments and card issuing, which made up over 50% of gross profit by March 2025, pushing gross profit growth to 78% year over year.
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• These products sit deeper in customer workflows. A platform can use Airwallex APIs to issue local cards, reimburse employees, pay suppliers, and accept card payments, all from the same wallet. That means more transactions per customer and less dependence on one off international transfer volume.
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• The competitive set changes with the mix. On transfers, Airwallex is closer to Wise and Payoneer. On issuing and embedded finance, it runs into Marqeta, Stripe, Brex, and Ramp, but with an edge from bundling global accounts, FX, acceptance, and issuing in one stack for multinational businesses.
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The next phase is more monetization from the installed base, not just more payment volume. As Airwallex adds local licenses, acceptance methods, and issuing coverage across more markets, more customer spend should stay inside its own rails and wallet. That should keep lifting gross profit even if cross border pricing gets tighter.