Airwallex and Stripe, from near acquisition to global rivalry

A deal that almost ended the rivalry became the starting point

Stripe and Airwallex did not begin as obvious enemies. For years, they grew in different geographies, sold to different buyers, and occupied separate lanes in global fintech. That separation is disappearing fast, and the old map of who competes where is collapsing into a single contest for the same multinational customer.

The closest these companies ever came to joining forces was in 2019, when Stripe offered to acquire Airwallex for $1.2 billion. At the time, Airwallex had just about $2 million in revenue, a figure that makes the offer look even more striking in hindsight. Jack Zhang initially agreed, then reversed course after flying back to Melbourne, a decision shaped in part by two of his three co-founders voting against the sale and by his desire to keep building a company that lets businesses operate anywhere as if they were local.

That choice matters now because Airwallex has grown into one of Stripe’s sharpest global challengers. Founded in Melbourne in 2015, Airwallex later moved its headquarters from Melbourne to Hong Kong and is now based in Singapore. Stripe, founded in San Francisco, has remained a giant of online payments, but the overlap between the two firms has widened as both have expanded beyond their original niches.

The overlap is no longer theoretical

The clearest break with the old geography came when Airwallex launched U.S. payment acceptance on April 24, 2024. That move put it directly in Stripe’s core lane, because acceptance is the front door to merchant payments and one of the most valuable distribution channels in fintech. Airwallex then deepened the overlap by acquiring OpenPay, adding billing capabilities that compete with Stripe Billing.

Stripe, for its part, moved in the opposite direction, broadening beyond plain payment processing into the same kind of global financial tooling that Airwallex had been building for years. Stripe launched multi-currency accounts after Airwallex had already offered them since 2018, a reminder that product leadership in fintech shifts quickly once the category becomes global rather than regional.

That convergence is the real story. Airwallex is no longer just an Asia-Pacific or cross-border specialist, and Stripe is no longer just a card payments company. Both are trying to own more of the stack, from payment acceptance to currency management to billing, so the winning company is not simply the one with the lowest fee, but the one that becomes the operating system for finance.

Scale is now part of the competitive weapon

The scale numbers show why the rivalry has become so direct. Stripe said in its 2024 update that it processed $1.4 trillion in total payment volume in 2024, up 38 percent year over year. That kind of throughput gives it enormous reach with software companies, online merchants, and global enterprises that want a single provider across markets.

Airwallex has been growing at a similarly aggressive pace, though from a smaller base. In May 2025, it said it had reached $720 million in annualized revenue, up 90 percent year over year, and had exceeded $130 billion in annualized payments volume. By April 2026, Airwallex was claiming more than $1.3 billion in annualized revenue, about 85 percent year-over-year growth, and nearly $300 billion in annualized transaction volume.

Those figures matter because they suggest Airwallex is not just nibbling at the edges of Stripe’s market. It is scaling into the same category of enterprise infrastructure provider, one that can serve businesses across borders, currencies, and payment methods. Airwallex also said it has close to 90 regulatory licenses across roughly 50 markets, direct connections to local payment networks in over 120 countries, and the ability to settle transactions in more than 90 currencies. That regulatory and network footprint is a strategic asset, because it makes local transactions look unified to the customer.

Cross-border payments have become a pricing war as much as a product war

The battleground is not only about features. Cross-border payments put pressure on pricing, because global merchants care about foreign exchange, settlement speed, local acceptance, and the cost of moving money across jurisdictions. Airwallex’s pitch has long been that businesses should be able to operate anywhere as if they were local, and its licenses, local network connections, and multi-currency settlement capabilities are designed to make that promise practical.

Stripe is responding by broadening its own global infrastructure, including its push into global accounts, AI, and stablecoins. That mix shows how the economics of fintech are changing. Once the core product is standardized, providers compete on distribution, bundled services, and how much of the customer’s financial workflow they can absorb into one platform.

That is why the rivalry is intensifying now rather than later. The more both firms expand into adjacent services, the less room there is for a simple “Stripe handles online payments, Airwallex handles cross-border” division of labor. If the customer wants payments acceptance, invoicing, multi-currency accounts, and settlement in one place, the competition becomes direct and global.

Bundled financial services are the new moat

Airwallex’s acquisition of OpenPay shows how clearly it understands the direction of travel. Billing is not a side feature anymore. It is a gateway into recurring revenue management, subscription infrastructure, and deeper software integrations, which is exactly the territory Stripe Billing has long occupied and which Stripe says now serves more than 300,000 companies.

That is the logic behind the broader platform race. Stripe is leaning into a more expansive financial infrastructure model, and Airwallex is doing the same, but from a younger and more internationally diffuse base. The companies are converging on the same customer promise: fewer vendors, more automation, more currencies, and more control over the money flow itself.

Airwallex’s newest move pushes that logic even further. On April 15, 2026, it announced a point-of-sale product aimed at in-person payments across multiple countries through a single platform. That is a direct challenge not only to Stripe, but also to Square and Adyen, and it signals that Airwallex is no longer content to be a cross-border specialist. It wants to compete wherever a business accepts money.

The IPO question now hangs over the rivalry

Zhang has said he wants Airwallex to be IPO-ready by the end of 2026, though he has also said he is not in a rush to list because the company still sees substantial growth opportunities across more than 20 jurisdictions. That stance fits the company’s current position: strong growth, expanding product scope, and enough international reach to keep compounding before tapping public markets.

The deeper significance of this rivalry is that it reflects a larger shift in fintech. Geographic boundaries matter less when a merchant wants to sell in the U.S., collect in Japan, settle in multiple currencies, and manage billing from one dashboard. Stripe and Airwallex are both trying to answer that demand, and the competition is no longer about who owns one region or one product. It is about who can become the default financial infrastructure layer for global commerce.