Why Airwallex Is Betting Against SWIFT and Stripe | CEO Jack Zhang

Jack Zhang landed in Melbourne at 15 with no money, no English, and no one to lean on. By 30, he was turning down a billion-dollar offer from Stripe. In this episode of HD in HD, I sit down with the co-founder and CEO of Airwallex to trace his zero-to-borderless journey—from small-town China to building one of the biggest tech stories ever to come out of Australia. We get into: • What Airwallex did differently that Stripe couldn’t in APAC • The $100,000 mistake that nearly derailed their first client • How Jack handled 2022’s valuation reset (and why he didn’t panic) • The AI opportunity he thinks everyone is sleeping on • how Airwallex hit $1B in volume before raising a proper Series A 00:00 Trailer 00:46 Introduction 01:18 Airwallex 04:58 No English from China to Australia 15:15 My first business, no financial support 23:06 All work, no fun 31:03 Development and coffee 36:26 Nothing is that hard 40:05 Startups 45:40 Brex 46:29 Starting Airwallex 53:27 The whole thing fell apart 57:20 Sequoia Capital and Tencent 1:05:41 Billion-dollar acquisition offer 1:11:59 Managing globally 1:16:20 Motivation and efficiency 1:23:26 Worth billions, hard to turn 1:24:58 Lessons from China 1:29:38 Outro