Australia-based cross-border payments startup Airwallex has closed a $13 million Series A round to expand its reach across Asia Pacific and into Europe. The deal was led by Chinese internet giant Tencent — marking its first investment in an Australian startup — with participation from Sequoia China, Mastercard and other undisclosed investors.
Airwallex was founded last year to tackle the issue of cross-border transactions at scale. Unlike predominantly consumer-focused services such as TransferWise — which actually opened an Asia Pacific HQ last week — Airwallex targets businesses, allowing them to make and receive international payments at scale at both a lower cost and with less hassle.
Beyond convenience of faster payment and reconciliation, the Melbourne-based startup, which previously raised $3 million last summer, has forged relationships with trading partners to help its customers save money on their overseas transactions.
“We’ve made settlement and reconciliation very easy, but our customers can also enjoy institutional FX prices to save a lot of money,” Airwallex CEO Jack Zhang told TechCrunch in an interview. “We can access the most competitive pricing in the world to facilitate traditional retailers that don’t enjoy that sort of rate.”
Already it is working with Tencent to help lower backend costs for its WeChat Pay service…