01/04/2026
, founder of , explains why explosive growth took a decade to arrive. After spending 10 years building global banking and payments infrastructure, Airwallex finally hit what Jack calls the inflection point. The result: 250% CAGR in the US and Europe, and a valuation jump from $4B to $8B in 18 months.
What makes this remarkable is where it came from. Airwallex launched in the US and Europe only 3.5 years ago, competing directly against Stripe, Ramp, and Brex on their home turf. Most fintechs start in the US and expand outward. Airwallex did the opposite: build the infrastructure in Asia first, then scale westward at speed.
The lesson is counterintuitive. In a world obsessed with rapid scaling, Jack bet on slow, unglamorous infrastructure work. Regulatory licenses, local bank integrations, real time payment networks. That decade of invisible building is now compounding into the kind of growth most startups only project in pitch decks.
