International payments provider Airwallex has closed a Series B funding round on $80m.
The round picked up commitments from existing backers Tencent and Sequoia China. Other participants to the round included Hillhouse, Horizons Ventures, Central Capital Ventura and Square Peg Capital.
Melbourne-based Airwallex is a cross-border payments solution that supports international money transfers through payment collection, foreign exchange and local payment distribution. The platform is supported by a foreign exchange, payment engine and transparent pricing model to lower market risk. The company’s main target for clients is financial institutions.
With this new line of funding, the company hopes to accelerate to production of its cross-border payment technology. It will also use this funding to push global expansion efforts, with plans to bolster connections between APAC, Europe and North America. Airwallex has dedicated entities for Melbourne, Hong Kong, Singapore, London and Shanghai and will extend to North America and Canada.
A ‘notable portion of funds’ will be used to improve financial inclusion in Hong Kong, where Airwallex will also apply for a virtual banking licence to support this. The company is also looking to support growth in the UK as the company believes there are vast opportunities, including post-Brexit, especially between China and Southeast Asia.
In Australia, the company hopes to fund its new product suite which will help Australian SMEs looking to expand internationally but struggle with payments and foreign exchange.
Sequoia China founding and managing partner Neil Shen said, “As the pace and connectivity of the digitalized global economy continues to rapidly accelerate, the need to focus on foreign exchange and payments has become critically important for large corporates and SMEs.
“We believe that Airwallex’s continuous improvement in providing seamless solutions for this problem is eliminating the obstacle, effectively giving their clients a clear advantage in a hyper competitive global market.”
This investment brings the company’s total funding efforts up to $102m. Late last year, the company raised a $6m Series A+ round from Square Peg Capital and followed on from the initial A round, which netted $13m earlier in the year.
