Airwallex Targets Stripe and Square in Physical Retail

Australian fintech giant Airwallex is challenging Stripe and Square by launching a global point-of-sale (POS) system today that allows multinational businesses to accept in-person payments across multiple countries without onboarding local vendors.

A Unified Solution for Global Countertops

The newly introduced physical payment solution tackles a major operational headache for expanding companies. Traditionally, moving into a new geographic market requires brick-and-mortar businesses to establish relationships with local card acquirers, navigate distinct compliance landscapes, and manage fragmented merchant accounts.

“When a business expands into a new market, they typically have to onboard a new local acquirer, navigate fragmented compliance, and manage yet another set of vendor relationships,” explained Airwallex CEO and co-founder Jack Zhang.

The $1.2 Billion Rejection That Fueled Growth

Airwallex’s trajectory could have been very different. In 2019, industry giant Stripe extended a $1.2 billion acquisition offer to the startup, which at the time was generating just $2 million in annual revenue. Although Zhang initially agreed to the acquisition after months of intense negotiations, a return to Melbourne prompted a change of heart.

“I even said yes to the deal,” Zhang recalled, reflecting on the negotiation process. “But what really got me to change my mind is when I actually flew back to Melbourne and went deep on what motivated me to build Airwallex.”

Zhang co-founded the company in 2015, driven by the high costs and friction associated with international money transfers. Instead of building on top of existing third-party systems, Airwallex spent years constructing its own proprietary global financial network from the ground up.

Inside Airwallex’s $8 Billion Infrastructure

That long-term infrastructure play has yielded significant financial returns. Currently valued at $8 billion, Airwallex reports an annualized revenue run rate of approximately $1.3 billion, representing an 85% year-over-year growth rate. The platform now processes $100 billion in annual transaction volume and supports over 46,000 businesses in the United States alone.

The fintech maintains nearly 90 regulatory licenses across roughly 50 markets, alongside direct integrations into local payment networks in more than 120 countries, enabling settlement in over 90 currencies. According to Zhang, this deeply integrated banking architecture is something competitors like Stripe and Square lack in key global corridors.

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Why Local Licenses Change the Game

The key differentiator lies in Airwallex’s ability to hold, convert, and deploy funds locally within a given market, rather than forcing immediate repatriation of revenues. This capability requires local banking licenses that are notoriously difficult to secure.

“Stripe and Square can process payments in Japan,” Zhang noted, “but when you actually process the payment, you need to immediately pay out to the merchant’s bank account. You can’t hold the funds.” Securing the necessary license to enable this capability in Japan took Airwallex seven years of regulatory groundwork.

The Battle for the Physical Payment Market

By expanding to physical countertops, Airwallex bridges the gap between digital and in-store transactions. The new POS product provides unified financial reporting and direct integrations into back-office ERP and accounting systems. For multinational retailers, this means stores across different continents can run on a single payment system, consolidating reconciliation into one dashboard.

This infrastructure-first strategy puts Airwallex in direct competition with Adyen, the publicly traded Dutch payments giant that offers a similar unified global setup. Meanwhile, legacy players like Fiserv, Global Payments, and Worldpay still dominate traditional retail, though they rely on older, less agile architectures.

The primary challenge for Airwallex will be convincing merchants already locked into Stripe or Square ecosystems to migrate their operations. However, the company believes the operational savings of managing a single global vendor will attract multinational brands.

“There’s just not been a real competition to Stripe in the last 15 years, which is quite amazing considering how big the market is,” Zhang said.