Airwallex, the Australia-founded global payments infrastructure company valued at approximately USD 8 billion, has expanded its financial platform into in-person commerce with the launch of Airwallex POS Payments, now live in Singapore, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and Europe. The move directly challenges established players in the physical payments market and positions Airwallex as a full-stack, cross-border financial platform for businesses operating across multiple countries.
Key Facts At A Glance
- Airwallex POS Payments launched in April 2026 and is currently available in Singapore, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and Europe, with the United States and Australia on the near-term roadmap.
- The product enables businesses to accept in-person payments across multiple countries through a single platform without onboarding separate local acquirers in each market.
- Airwallex holds approximately 90 regulatory licenses and maintains direct connections to local payment networks in over 120 countries, settling transactions in more than 90 currencies.
- The platform integrates with existing point-of-sale, order management, and enterprise resource planning systems via APIs and software development kits.
- SoftPOS support allows platforms to embed in-person payment acceptance into their applications without deploying separate hardware.
- Airwallex reports annualized revenue of approximately USD 1.3 billion, growing at roughly 85% year over year, and serves over 46,000 businesses in the United States alone.
- Airwallex’s Japan regulatory license, which took seven years to obtain, enables the company to hold and deploy funds domestically rather than immediately repatriating them to merchant bank accounts, a capability it identifies as a key differentiator.
Extending The Infrastructure To Physical Commerce
Airwallex was founded in Melbourne in 2015 by Jack Zhang and co-founders who were frustrated by the friction and cost of international money movement. The company spent its first decade assembling proprietary payment rails rather than relying on third-party infrastructure. That approach yielded a global network spanning over 120 countries and secured regulatory licenses in roughly 70 to 80 markets. The strategy has now been extended to the physical retail environment with the launch of Airwallex POS Payments.
The product connects in-store and online payments within a single platform, offering unified reporting and direct integrations into back-office systems. For businesses with operations in multiple countries, the system allows stores in different markets to operate on the same payment infrastructure and reconcile transactions in one place, without establishing separate local vendor relationships or navigating fragmented compliance requirements in each jurisdiction.
A core commercial argument behind the launch is that traditional multi-market expansion requires a merchant to onboard a new local acquirer in each country, manage separate vendor relationships, and handle disparate compliance obligations. Airwallex’s platform is designed to remove that operational complexity through a single integration.
Competitive Positioning
The launch places Airwallex in direct competition with Adyen, which makes a similar global infrastructure argument in the in-person payments market, as well as Square and legacy processors such as Fiserv and the combined Global Payments and Worldpay, which hold significant market share among brick-and-mortar retailers. Stripe, which attempted to acquire Airwallex for USD 1.2 billion in 2019, remains a key rival across the broader payments stack.
Airwallex CEO and co-founder Jack Zhang has identified Adyen as the most direct competitor in global in-person payments infrastructure. A key differentiator the company highlights is its ability to hold funds within a local market rather than immediately repatriating them, enabled by its local banking licenses. Its Japan license, which took seven years to secure, is cited as an example of infrastructure that allows funds to be held, converted, and deployed domestically.
The company has announced plans to invest USD 1 billion in the United States market between now and 2029, a significant increase from the USD 150 million deployed over the prior five years.
Product Architecture And Initial Deployment
Airwallex POS Payments integrates with existing point-of-sale, order management, enterprise resource planning, and platform systems through APIs and software development kits, allowing businesses to adopt the product without rebuilding existing stacks. The SoftPOS capability enables platforms to embed in-person payment acceptance into their applications without shipping separate payment hardware to the businesses using them.
Deliverect, whose ordering solutions serve restaurants and hospitality businesses globally, has confirmed it is building on the Airwallex POS infrastructure for the launch of new self-ordering kiosks. The company said it plans to deploy Airwallex POS Payments across all of its major markets.
The product also allows platforms to offer additional embedded financial services through the same integration, including payouts, accounts, and cards. The United States and Australia are identified as the next markets on the rollout roadmap.