It’s under fire over 15-hour days and concerns about its Beijing connections, but the payments company is on a roll.
It’s 5.30am in Singapore on March 10, 2023. Jack Zhang gets up in his hotel room, looks at his phone and realises something is wrong. As the founder of Airwallex, a financial technology scale-up with 1500 staff in 20 offices around the world, Zhang is accustomed to a busy WhatsApp inbox. But he has dozens of missed calls and unread messages. From a quick glance, they seem to all be
Zhang scrambles to get the sign-offs he needs to move that much money; the $US345 million is about two-thirds of the cash on Airwallex’s balance sheet. But he can’t wake the final approver he needs, Lucy Liu. She is the fourth founder of Airwallex, who came on board after she met Zhang at a Melbourne dinner party.
While he refuses to respond to the criticism, in talking to Zhang you are in no doubt of his ambition. Airwallex’s origin story, told often by Zhang, is that it all began with coffee cups; Li was running a Melbourne cafe that Zhang had invested in, and they noticed foreign exchange charges on a $15,000 remittance to their Chinese supplier of coffee cups had been nearly $800. According to the company’s website, they “believed something better must be possible.
“Unlike the banks, we don’t lend out any of the money in our Australian customers’ accounts – ANZ safeguards it on trust for us – but they want us to hold an extra 5 per cent of our own capital as a buffer anyway,” Zhang says, shaking his head. “We’re trying to promote competition, but a lot of the regulation in Australia is very in favour of traditional banks.” In the US, Airwallex had to apply for a separate money transmitter licence for every state.
Zhang: “We’re basically venture capital independent – we’d only go back to them to give our employees liquidity on their shares – so going public is kind of optional for us.”It’s become part of Australian start-up folklore that within 18 months of starting Airwallex with $1 million of Liu’s money, it had raised millions more and entered commercial relationships with two of finance’s biggest names.
Of course, the payments sector is tightly regulated for good reason. The downside of the rise of these disruptors at the expense of regulated banks, according to Schlagwein, is the reduced oversight they allow domestic authorities. “All sorts of small businesses are now born global and have really complex financial services needs,” says Paul Bassat. “And Airwallex is catering for that.”Still, there are other reasons why Beijing would be interested in Airwallex, given it offers a way to pay in yuan outside of China.
But the criticism is not out of the blue. “Great intensity and pressure will cause decline in , but it’s what required to survive,” Zhang wrote in a post on Twitter last year in response tothat it was hard to expect employees to do the 15-hour days that he and his co-founders were then routinely doing – until they also had shares.
United Kingdom Latest News, United Kingdom Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
AFR Young Rich List 2023: 16 new faces join the ranks of Australia’s wealthiest people aged under 40One made a fortune from glittery statement dresses, another sold up to Sam Bankman-Fried just in time. The newest self-made 40-and-unders are a mixed bag.
Read more »
AFR Young Rich List 2023: Argylica Conditsis of Babyboo and brother William are among Australia’s wealthiest people aged under 40 – and it all started with a pair of sparkling high heelsArgylica Conditsis’ business started when she couldn’t find bedazzled shoes. This year, she and brother William debut on the list of Australia’s most wealthy under 40.
Read more »
AFR Young Rich List 2023: Jake Paco’s teachers said he’d end up in jail. Now the Geedup Co clothing founder is one of Australia’s 100 most wealthy aged under 40Geedup founder Jake Paco has conquered his demons and is taking his cult streetwear brand from western Sydney to New York.
Read more »
AFR Young Rich List 2023: Jake Paco’s teachers said he’d end up in jail. Now the Geedup Co clothing founder is one of Australia’s 100 most wealthy aged under 40Geedup founder Jake Paco has conquered his demons and is taking his cult streetwear brand from western Sydney to New York.
Read more »
Young Rich List 2023: Hismile and Bondi Sands lead one of the fastest growing categories for Australia’s wealthiest under 40Australian beauty brands have pushed out the established labels, from toothpaste to tanning, with a little product innovation and a lot of savvy marketing.
Read more »
The rich have a voice, that’s our democracy, apparentlyReaders respond to the sensational Anthony Pratt recordings and Donald Trump’s scathing response.
Read more »