Just one week after Airwallex was hit by damaging allegations from a US venture capitalist over its links to China, the company’s chief executive Jack Zhang raised a middle finger to critics by announcing a mammoth capital raise.
But the truly interesting element of Airwallex’s USD330 million ($497 million) Series G, which valued the company at USD8 billion, was not the size of the round. It was the subtle repositioning of the fintech as an Australian company once again.
In the US, including Silicon Valley, Airwallex is not widely known. Many had never heard of it until VC Keith Rabois accused the company of operating what he described as a Chinese backdoor for accessing sensitive US financial data.
The allegations were provocative and remain unsubstantiated. Airwallex denied them outright.
Among those who were familiar with the company before the controversy, Airwallex was generally understood as a Singapore-headquartered payments firm with Chinese operations, early Chinese capital and a focus on APAC.
