Airwallex enters physical POS
Airwallex announced a point‑of‑sale product that lets merchants accept in‑person payments across multiple countries on one platform, explicitly positioning itself against Stripe. (techcrunch.com). The product is pitched to unify online and offline settlement and reporting so international merchants don't have to stitch multiple vendors together. (techcrunch.com)
Airwallex said on April 15 it is launching a point-of-sale product for in-person payments, pushing the company into physical retail and against Stripe Terminal. (techcrunch.com) The pitch is simple: a merchant selling in several countries can use one Airwallex system for checkout, settlement, and reporting instead of stitching together separate local providers. TechCrunch reported the product is aimed at businesses that want online and offline payments handled on one platform. (techcrunch.com) That puts Airwallex into a market Stripe has already been building in for years. Stripe says its Terminal product lets businesses accept in-person card payments and manage online and in-person payments in the same dashboard. (docs.stripe.com, stripe.com) Airwallex is trying to sell a cross-border version of that promise. TechCrunch reported the company has close to 90 regulatory licenses across 70 to 80 regions and direct links to local payment rails in more than 120 countries. (glenbrook.com, techcrunch.com) The move comes as Airwallex has been raising money to expand. In May 2025, the company announced a $300 million Series F round at a $6.2 billion valuation, bringing total funding to more than $1.2 billion. (airwallex.com, forbes.com) By December 2025, Airwallex had raised another $330 million at an $8 billion valuation, according to Bloomberg and other reports. That gave the company more capital as it moved beyond online payments into store counters and card readers. (bloomberg.com, techstartups.com) Airwallex has also kept widening its geographic footprint. Its newsroom said on April 1 that it received approvals from Bank Negara Malaysia for e-money issuing and Class A licenses for a full commercial launch there. (airwallex.com) For merchants, the bet is that one provider can now handle a sale on a website, a sale in a shop, and the back-end money movement after both. For Airwallex, the next test is whether global sellers will trust it with the physical checkout, not just the online one. (techcrunch.com, docs.stripe.com)
