Airwallex raises $100M at a $5.5B valuation to expand its business banking and payments platform globally
Thursday, November 18, 2021
(TechCrunch by Ingrid Lunden) – E-commerce and other online businesses are becoming increasingly global in their operations and customer bases, and a startup called Airwallex — which has built a banking solution that addresses the opportunity to provide cross-border financial services — has been seeing a massive surge of activity. To capitalize further on that opportunity, today the company is announcing growth funding.
Hong Kong and Melbourne-based Airwallex has raised $100 million, capital that it will be using to continue building out its banking and payments businesses into more markets, and to invest expanding its products.
The funding — which is being led by Lone Pine Capital and joined by 1835i Ventures (the venture arm of ANZ, the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group) and Sequoia Capital China, all previous investors — is an extension to the company’s Series E that it announced only in September; and it brings the total of the round to $300 million.
The valuation is also being extended with this latest injection: Airwallex is now worth $5.5 billion (compared to $4 billion in September). From what we understand, the company was getting term sheets as high as $7 billion from outside investors (that outside interest was what prompted the round in the first place).
