Airwallex takes the friction out of global payments and financial operations, empowering businesses of all sizes to grow beyond borders. It was launched by Jack Zhang and his four friends after paying exorbitant foreign exchange fees for online purchases. He shares pearls of wisdom from his decades-long career
Airwallex, founded in Melbourne and headquartered in Singapore, is a global financial platform that helps businesses manage and make international payments quickly, transparently and cost-efficiently, without the constraints of the traditional financial system. Today, Airwallex is a unicorn with more than 1,400 employees across 20 locations, supporting 100,000 businesses globally. Investors include bigwigs like Sequoia Capital and Tencent.
Before establishing Airwallex, Jack Zhang worked in the banking industry and founded various businesses including an import-export company and a café; it was an attempt to buy supplies online for the latter that prompted the founding of Airwallex. Here, he shares his story.
Describe what you do.
Airwallex is global financial infrastructure that powers modern businesses to grow beyond borders. I set a vision for the company and lead its global expansion.
How does your work make a difference?
When you think about how businesses and people moved money before Airwallex, it was made up of a lot of wire or Swift transfers [whose infrastructure] was built in the 1970s. It’s slow, expensive and not very convenient. With Airwallex, we built a parallel infrastructure to connect to real-time payment networks around the world; with Airwallex, it is much faster and cheaper to move money globally. You can receive money in more than 65 countries and accept payments in more than 180 countries, leveraging our proprietary payment network.
Tell us about the genesis of Airwallex.
I’m someone who really focuses on problem solving. Airwallex started because I was running a coffee start-up and buying coffee beans from around the world: Brazil, Indonesia and Kenya; and buying packaging from China. We had to pay our vendors globally using Western Union and traditional banks, and it was a clunky experience. We found a problem to solve and started the company to solve it.
What was your first job as a young adult and how did you end up in this field?
I have spent more than 20 years in Australia [which included secondary school, university and his early career]. I was a kitchen hand in high school. Back then, I also started a magazine called Urban Exploration. I was the editor and would write about interesting things happening in the city. In college, I was a bartender. I worked in a supermarket and a computer repair shop, and I also built websites. I started my career in 2007 in an investment company and then went on to work in investment banks—on the trading floor and writing code. I started many businesses on the side, partnering with friends. We started a real-estate development company, an olive oil and red wine trading company and an architecture project management company. One of those happened to be the coffee business that led to the idea of Airwallex. I moved to Hong Kong to set up an office in 2017.