Airwallex expands into card issuing

This shows Airwallex moving from a payments vendor into a broader money operating system, which puts it on a direct collision course with specialist card issuers. Marqeta mainly sells the card engine, the APIs that let a fintech or enterprise launch debit or credit cards and control spend at the transaction level. Airwallex is packaging issuing with global accounts, FX, bill pay, and cross border payouts, so a customer can run treasury and cards in one stack.

• The product overlap is real. Marqeta is built around card issuing and issuer processing at scale, while Airwallex now says cards and payments generate more than 50% of gross profit in Europe and the US, with customers using its white label card products alongside collections and employee reimbursements.
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• The buyer motion is different. A Marqeta customer often comes in wanting to launch a card program and then assembles other banking pieces around it. An Airwallex customer often starts with international money movement, then adds cards so the same balances, entities, and currencies can be used to pay suppliers and employees.
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• That bundling matters most for global platforms and multinational SMB software. If Deel, Brex, or Rippling already use Airwallex to move funds across borders, adding issuing is simpler than stitching together Marqeta for cards, banking partners for accounts, and another provider for FX and local payouts.
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The next phase is a shift from point solutions to bundled financial infrastructure. Marqeta is adding more program management and European issuing capabilities, but Airwallex is pushing the market toward one vendor that can hold funds, convert them, move them, and spend them. As embedded finance globalizes, that integrated model should win more of the platform and enterprise segment.