Airwallex challenges Stripe

Airwallex is putting more than $1 billion into the U.S. by 2029, opening a direct challenge to Stripe on its home turf. (airwallex.com) The plan came with Airwallex’s $330 million Series G round, which valued the company at $8 billion and made San Francisco its second global headquarters. Airwallex said the money will fund U.S. hiring, product work, and a bigger physical and brand presence. (airwallex.com) Airwallex said it expects to deploy the U.S. investment from 2026 through 2029. The company has also been adding U.S. products, including a treasury tool called Yield that launched for American businesses in March 2026 after passing $1 billion in global assets under administration. (airwallex.com 1) (airwallex.com 2) Both companies sell the software and bank connections that let internet businesses accept payments, move money across borders, and build billing into apps with code instead of local banking setups. Stripe describes itself as “financial infrastructure,” while Airwallex pitches a single platform for payments, foreign exchange, treasury, spend management, and accounts. (stripe.com) (airwallex.com) That overlap has widened beyond simple checkout buttons. Stripe now offers Orchestration, a product that routes payments across processors, while Airwallex has been pushing deeper into acceptance, embedded finance, and in-person payments. (docs.stripe.com) (airwallex.com) (techcrunch.com) Stripe is still much larger. Stripe said businesses on its platform generated $1.9 trillion in total payment volume in 2025, up 34% from 2024, after processing $1.4 trillion in 2024; it also said it was profitable in 2024 and expected to remain so in 2025 and beyond. (stripe.com 1) (stripe.com 2) (assets.stripeassets.com) Airwallex has been growing fast from a smaller base. In June 2025, the company said it served 150,000 businesses worldwide and expected to hit $1 billion in annual run-rate revenue that year, and in February 2026 Chief Executive Jack Zhang wrote that the company’s long-term target was $10 billion in annual recurring revenue. (airwallex.com 1) (airwallex.com 2) The U.S. push also comes as Airwallex tries to turn cross-border strength into a broader domestic business. The company said in late 2024 that revenue in the Americas had risen more than 300% year over year, after opening offices in San Francisco, Austin, New York, Toronto, and São Paulo. (airwallex.com) By 2029, the test will be whether Airwallex can win American developers and larger merchants without losing the cross-border edge that got it here. Stripe already has the scale, profits, and product breadth; Airwallex is now spending to prove it can narrow that gap. (stripe.com) (airwallex.com)