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As global markets enter a decade shaped by geopolitical fragmentation, regulatory divergence and volatile capital flows, the ability to act with financial clarity in real time is a crucial advantage. Companies are increasingly global from day one—hiring talent worldwide, sourcing across borders and selling into multiple markets—yet many are still stuck with siloed legacy financial systems built for a slower era.
Across industries, business leaders are rethinking how finance should work. What was once treated as a back office reporting function is increasingly being repositioned as a core execution engine that must move capital, manage risk and provide visibility across markets in real time. Speed, context and intelligence are increasingly determining how effectively companies can move capital, manage risk and act across markets in real time.
Airwallex was built specifically for this new reality.
Global by design: where ambition meets financial friction
For a growing number of businesses, operating across multiple markets is no longer a choice — it’s table stakes. But legacy banking systems are ill suited to this environment, creating friction that can dampen growth. In a study from Airwallex, 68 percent of Hong Kong companies reported that they struggle with cash-flow management, 53 percent face capital restrictions and 48 percent are hit by FX volatility and rising transaction costs.
Airwallex was built to remove this friction. Its platform routes more than 95 percent of transactions through local payment networks across 120+ countries, with roughly 94 percent settling on the same day. For businesses, this means a unified, real-time view of global liquidity without the complexity of managing multiple banking relationships, security systems or reconciliation processes.
From Hong Kong to the world: global finance in practice
Airwallex is already supporting businesses scaling out of Hong Kong. SleekFlow, a provider of omnichannel social commerce software, operates with a distributed workforce and a global customer base.
As the business expanded internationally, the constraints of traditional banking models became more pronounced. Managing payroll, cross border payments and customer receipts across currencies created cost, delay and fragmented visibility, driven largely by forced currency conversions and disconnected settlement processes.
By using Airwallex’s Global Accounts, foreign exchange, international transfers and corporate cards, SleekFlow consolidates multi currency collections, payments and day to day spending onto a single platform, cutting overseas transfer fees by more than 99 per cent in SleekFlow’s case, while improving visibility over global cash flows and reducing manual intervention. In this model, finance scales alongside the business rather than constraining it.
How Airwallex’s AI layer builds on infrastructure to create real value
As businesses unify financial infrastructure to operate across markets in real time, attention is turning to how artificial intelligence can enhance execution. But in global finance, AI’s impact is shaped by what sits beneath it. AI cannot replace the hard work of building licensed, country by country financial infrastructure – an effort Airwallex has spent more than a decade undertaking.
“In global finance, artificial intelligence can only be as effective as the infrastructure it sits on,” says Arnold Chan, APAC General Manager of Airwallex. “AI is lowering the cost of software across industries, but it’s infrastructure and data that ultimately determine whether it can create real value. By connecting money in, money out and everything in between on a single global system, we give our AI the context it needs to support real financial execution—not just generate insights.”
From insight to execution: what AI enables today
When finance teams have a unified, real-time view of their global position, they can move from reactive to more proactive decision-making. Increasingly, AI-powered optimisation tools are helping businesses analyse payments, FX and operational data in context, improving visibility and decision support across markets.
This enables use cases such as real time cash positioning, FX and dynamic risk monitoring as conditions change. Instead of relying on delayed reports, finance teams can respond as conditions evolve.
This approach is already visible across Airwallex’s platform.
Embedding global finance into how businesses operate
Beyond serving finance teams directly, Airwallex’s platform can also be embedded into other products. SaaS companies, marketplaces and global enterprises can integrate global accounts, payouts and billing into their own offerings, enabling customers to operate across borders from day one.
Proof at scale
Airwallex’s momentum reflects the scale of this transformation. In late 2025, the company raised US$330 million in a Series G round, valuing it at US$8 billion and earmarking funds for AI hiring and product development. As of the end of 2025, its infrastructure is processing over US$266 billion in transaction volume annually. By designing infrastructure, software and AI as a single system, Airwallex is moving financial operations away from retrospective reporting toward predictive, automated execution.
“For more than a decade, we’ve built our own global payment rails, compliance systems and data foundations,” Chan says. “AI is embedded in how the platform operates today. With accounts, payments and workflows running on one global system, our platform’s AI engine has the context it needs to support real actions, not just provide insights. From a customer’s perspective, finance becomes a growth enabler, giving businesses the confidence to scale across borders.”
