Stripe and Airwallex Now Direct Competitors — Airwallex Launches POS Across 50 Markets with 90 Financial Licenses

TechCrunch·medium signalXBlueskyLinkedInCopy link

Airwallex, now at $1.3B annualized revenue, is launching point-of-sale payments and going head-to-head with Stripe across the full payments stack. Airwallex holds ~90 financial licenses in 50 markets versus Stripe's roughly half, including a Japan fund-holding license that took seven years to obtain. The companies nearly merged when Stripe considered acquiring Airwallex for $1.2B at $2M revenue — co-founder Jack Zhang walked away, and Airwallex has since grown over 600x.