Australian fintech unicorn and RippleNet member, Airwallex, raised $160 million in a fundraising circular led past the investment artillery of Australian 'big four' bank, ANZ, and San Francisco-based deject software company, Salesforce.

Existing investors Tencent, Sequoia Capital China, DST Global, and Horizons Ventures likewise participated in the circular — bringing the total raised to-date past the cross-border payments platform to $362 million as of April 16.

Aussie fintech unicorn raises $160 meg

Airwallex will direct the funds into expanding its global footprint, with Europe and the United States amid its side by side target markets. Airwallex besides launched offices in Tokyo, Bangalore, and Dubai last twelvemonth.

In March 2022, Airwallex received a $1 billion valuation — ranking it as Commonwealth of australia's second unicorn alongside graphic design firm, Canva. Australia is currently domicile to three unicorns, with aerial imagery company, Nearmap, recently joining the list.

Ron Spector, ANZi Ventures managing manager, stated that the bank is "look[ing] forward to working further with the team to back up their vision of building a next-generation digital payments platform for SMBs and enterprises globally."

Airwallex grew out of a cafe owned by the company'southward co-founders in Melbourne'south Docklands. Subsequently struggling to find an efficient manner to pay exporters in Hong Kong and China for java cups in 2022, the pair teamed up with iii friends from Melbourne Academy to launch the startup.

RippleNet expands global network

Airwallex'due south raise comes amid an increasing global expansion of RippleNet.

On April 15, Ripple announced a partnership with Malaysian payments firm, MoneyMatch. The business firm now offers cross-border remittance to over 120 countries through RippleNet.

On April 9, Thailand'south oldest financial institution, Siam Commercial Bank, launched a partnership with digital payments company, Azimo, to offer about-instant international remittances using RippleNet.

Despite great excitement regarding Ripple'southward partnership with leading Mexican remittance platform Intermex, a March earnings telephone call revealed that the firm volition merely use RippleNet to service new markets.