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Airwallex to Invest Over $1.6B in Singapore, Adding Around 250 Jobs

Airwallex Bets $1.6B on Singapore

Hey FinTech Fanatic!

Earlier this week, I wrote about Revolut committing at least $1 billion to Latin America. Now Airwallex is putting a big number on the table too. Only this time, it’s at home.

The company plans to invest more than $1.6 billion in Singapore over the next five years, growing its local team from around 750 to over 1,000 people. That’s roughly 250 new jobs.

Singapore is one of Airwallex’s two global co-headquarters, alongside San Francisco. The plan came as it officially opened its expanded office at Guoco Tower, set to cover more than 80,000 sq ft across four floors once complete.

What I find interesting is where the money goes. The investment is aimed at product development, engineering, and AI.

With more than 2,700 people in 27 offices worldwide, Airwallex already has over a quarter of its team in Singapore. This makes the city even more of a place where its products get built.

And the local business seems to back that up: Singapore revenue and transaction volume both grew around 90% year on year in the first half of 2026.

To me, that’s the bigger picture. As global FinTechs scale, where you build becomes as important a choice as where you sell. Revolut is spending to enter new markets. Airwallex is spending to strengthen the base it builds from.

The big question is how much of Airwallex’s next wave of products, AI included, will come out of Singapore. Definitely one to watch.

Plenty more happened in FinTech today.

Let’s dive in, and I’ll be back in your inbox tomorrow!

Cheers,

Marcel

INSIGHTS

💡 Pliant: Why Third-Party Agents Travel First Class on the Pliant Platform. Should businesses use the AI built into their payments platform, or bring their own agents such as Claude? In this analysis, Fabian Terner, CPO & Co-founder at Pliant, explains how the company approaches that choice. He splits its AI features into chat for ad hoc tasks, automations for recurring ones, and connectors that bring Pliant into third-party AI tools. He then sets out eight factors for deciding between them, from whether a task spans several tools to whether several people need to approve it. The key takeaway: Pliant says it will keep building its own Assistant and Agents while treating external agents as first-class citizens on its platform. Read the full analysis here

FINTECH NEWS

🇸🇬 Airwallex to invest more than S$2B in Singapore over five years. The company, which has opened an expanded co-headquarters at Guoco Tower, plans to grow its Singapore workforce from about 750 to more than 1,000 over the same period.

🇬🇧 OpenPayd reaches $107M in annual recurring revenue. Q2 FY27 revenue rose 44% YoY to $25.4M, while stablecoin orchestration revenue grew from $0.5M to $3.9M in the first half. OpenPayd serves more than 1,260 corporate clients.

🇺🇸 Avaloq enters the US wealth market with Avaloq Mosaic. The NEC-owned firm launched the platform with Portfolio IQ and Allocator, with additional modules for tax, asset servicing and lending planned for future release.

🇮🇹 Webull launches brokerage services in Italy. Italian customers can trade US and European equities, European ETFs and US options through Webull EU under its MiFID II licence, its second EU market after the Netherlands.

🇸🇪 Mynt doubles annualised revenue to €30M. The Stockholm-based spend management firm's run rate reached €30M in October, up from €14M at the start of 2026, and it now serves 30,000 business customers.

🇦🇷 eToro targets $100M Latin America revenue after LB Finanzas deal. The deal for the Argentine app cost less than $20M, executives said on the Q3 call, with the revenue target set for the next two to three years.

🇵🇾 Paraguayan prosecutors order arrest of Itti CEO in Ueno Bank case. César Manuel Astigarraga, former president of Itti and head of the Paraguayan FinTech Chamber, is one of 27 accused in the investigation linked to the collapsed digital lender.

#FINTECHREPORT

💡 Zilch Moves Closer to a Potential London IPO. The UK FinTech reported FY26 revenue of £147.5M (+36% YoY), with GMV reaching £2.4B (+28%) and its active customer base growing to 970,000. Momentum has continued into FY27, with annualised revenue run rate reaching $300M, ARR hitting £245M in October, and two consecutive quarters of adjusted profitability. CEO and Co-Founder Philip Belamant says the company is closer than ever to its stock market ambitions, with a London listing reportedly possible as early as 2027. Read the full update here

PAYMENTS NEWS

🇹🇭 Omise becomes a direct acquirer for Visa and Mastercard in Thailand. The payment gateway can now manage card acquiring and settlement itself. Acquiring-as-a-service, PayFac and orchestration services are planned as future offerings.

🇩🇰 Clearhaus aims to double its customer base by 2027. The Danish payments firm is expanding its merchant network by processing payments for new retail locations and targeting more small and medium-sized businesses as it competes with Nets.

DIGITAL BANKING NEWS

🇱🇹 Yapily joins the Lithuanian FinTech Association. The open banking platform, which provides programmable payments and financial insights across the UK and Europe, counts Google, Adyen and Revolut among its customers, alongside Intuit QuickBooks and Allica Bank.

🇺🇸 Kraken launches recurring ACH deposits for US customers. Customers can schedule daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly deposits with no fee from a bank account linked through Plaid. Funds can be withdrawn after seven days.

🇬🇧 Revolut expects to hire fewer people as AI automation progresses. CEO Nik Storonsky said on the Cheeky Pint podcast that team sizes have not yet changed, and that he hopes Revolut could list in 2028.

🇧🇷 Nubank targets affluent customers with an ETF push. The digital bank plans an ETF-based investment strategy to strengthen its presence among Ultravioleta and Croma customers in 2027, Estadão reports.

PODCAST RECOMMENDATION

💡 Incognia: Why Banks Struggle to Detect Authorized Payment Scams. In this episode, Dwayne Gefferie speaks with André Ferraz, CEO and Co-Founder of Incognia, about why authorized payment scams often bypass traditional fraud controls. They explore how social engineering, impersonation and urgency manipulate customers into making legitimate-looking transfers, why warnings and consumer education often fall short, and how analyzing recipients, mule account networks and location intelligence can help banks identify suspicious payments before funds move. The discussion also examines the growing threat of AI-powered impersonation. Watch the full episode here

Why Banks Struggle to Detect Authorized Payment Scams

BLOCKCHAIN/CRYPTO NEWS

🇮🇱 Discount Bank to offer bitcoin and ether trading in its app. From 26 November, retail customers with a securities account can buy, hold and sell crypto with Fireblocks custody, the first such service in the Israeli banking system.

🇩🇪 Deutsche Bank launches digital asset custody service. The service, announced in September pending approval, lets institutional clients safekeep bitcoin and ether. The bank also signed an MoU with Deutsche Asset Management on digital asset collaboration.

🇪🇺 xStocks expands into tokenised UK and European equities. Payward has added more than 200 UK and EU-listed companies to its xStocks offering, with tokens backed 1:1 by underlying shares and available for trading on Kraken, although UK and US investors remain excluded.

🌐 Initia confirms second exploit in three weeks, losing $3.27M. Attackers used a compromised Google Cloud key to validate fraudulent withdrawals from five rollups. About $2.16M remains frozen on the halted chain, after a $2.7M exploit on 23 October.

🇦🇪 UAE FinTech Wafr launches WafrChain for Islamic sukuk. The permissioned blockchain handles sukuk issuance, distribution and settlement via banks and stablecoins. Wafr has raised an undisclosed pre-seed round backed by Tyme's Coen Jonker and Neal Cross.

STABLECOINS NEWS

🌐 Banks reportedly commit $270M to stablecoin venture Project Faro. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Santander and Deutsche Bank are among the banks said to fund five years of operating costs for the venture, which plans a US dollar stablecoin and a euro token.

🇺🇸 Visa adds Monad to its stablecoin settlement network. Participating issuers and acquirers can now settle through Monad. Visa's annualised stablecoin settlement run rate reached $20B in September, with more than 225 stablecoin-linked card programmes live.

PARTNERSHIPS

🇺🇸 Mastercard and Tidalwave bring open finance to mortgage lenders. Mastercard Open Finance is being integrated into Tidalwave's AI-native mortgage platform, letting lenders access borrower-consented financial data within origination workflows. No rollout timeline was given.

🇧🇭 GPS, EazyPay and Mastercard launch prepaid card programme in Bahrain. GPS will provide card issuing and processing, tokenisation, fraud monitoring and 3D Secure for EazyPay's new Mastercard prepaid cards, running on Mastercard's network.

🇺🇸 Plaid and DoorDash Crimson launch direct integration. More than 2 million Dashers can now connect their Crimson accounts, which offer banking services provided by Starion Bank, to over 9,000 apps and services on the Plaid network.

🇺🇸 SurveyMonkey selects Checkout.com as payment acquirer. Under the agreement, Checkout.com will process subscription payments for SurveyMonkey across the US, UK, Europe, Canada and Australia, using its payment orchestration capabilities, although a start date has yet to be announced.

🇪🇺 Duffel and Katanox combine hotel bookings, payments and financing. Travel sellers using Duffel's API will be able to pay hotels through Katanox's instant account-to-account payments, with automated reconciliation and payment advances from Katanox Capital.

🇺🇸 Coinflow and Bastion power US payouts for Samsung Wallet. Eligible users can move stablecoin balances out via push-to-card, RTP and ACH, with Bastion acting as the licensed stablecoin custodian.

🇪🇺 Revolut Pay becomes a payment option in the Uber app. Users in the UK and Europe can pay natively with Revolut Pay inside Uber and earn five times the usual Uber points until 6 January, while still collecting Revolut card rewards.

🇬🇧 Equifax and ClearScore add rental payments to credit files. Up to nine million UK renters will be able to share their rent history free of charge by connecting bank accounts in the ClearScore app via open banking.

🇩🇪 Crédit Agricole Deutschland selects Enfuce for Visa debit cards. Enfuce acts as issuer, BIN sponsor and processor for the newly launched retail bank, with Giesecke+Devrient supplying the physical cards.

DONEDEAL FUNDING NEWS

🇧🇷 Nova raises $24M Series A to link credit cards to Pix. Canaan led the round for the Brazilian FinTech, which lets consumers use existing credit cards for instant payments and bills such as rent and tuition, CEO Rafael Matos said.

🇺🇸 Imprint raises $130M at a $1.88B valuation. Ribbit Capital, Thrive Capital, Kleiner Perkins and Khosla joined new investor Positive Sum. The co-branded card company, which is adding a Fanatics card, expects about $400M in revenue this year.

🇲🇽 Nexu secures $55M credit line from BBVA Spark. The Mexican auto financing FinTech will use the revolving credit line to issue more than 10,000 car loans through a network of 3,000 dealerships, distributors and brands.

🇨🇴 Palomma raises $14M for AI-driven rental payments in Latin America. Cometa led the round, with Y Combinator participating. The Colombian firm handles $130M in monthly rent payments and may expand to Mexico, Brazil and the US Hispanic market.

🇺🇸 Bud Financial receives investment from BankTech Ventures. The undisclosed investment will fund Bud's US go-to-market expansion and the development of its Revenue Agents for US banks and credit unions.

🇬🇧 Salad secures £1.5M to expand affordable lending in London. The new investment will help the lender extend access to affordable credit across the capital, supporting its plans to reach more borrowers.

🌍 Norfund commits $25M to DPI's next fund. The investment in Development Partners International's upcoming fund follows the reported MNT-Halan IPO, although further details on the fund's investment plans were not provided.

M&A

🇺🇸 Western Union terminates its agreement to acquire Intermex. Western Union cited California regulator conditions attached to its approval of the roughly $500M deal. Intermex rejects the termination and has reserved its rights, including seeking damages.

🇺🇸 Stripe completes acquisition of OpenRouter. The AI model marketplace, used by more than 10 million developers and businesses, officially joined Stripe following their August agreement. OpenRouter will retain its neutral approach to AI model routing, while the companies work to help businesses optimise token usage and costs.

🇺🇸 FIBT agrees to acquire Dallas-based Dominion Bank. The acquisition of Dominion, which holds $650M in assets, will expand First International Bank & Trust's presence into Texas, bringing its network to 31 branches across five states upon completion, expected in Q1 2027.

🇧🇷 Conta Azul acquires financial BPO platform PlayBPO. The Brazilian SME software company is acquiring a business it first invested in back in 2021, expanding its reach through PlayBPO's network of more than 1,200 BPO firms serving 15,000 small businesses. Financial terms were not disclosed.

🇺🇸 FIS pauses acquisitions after $12B Issuer Solutions purchase. CEO Stephanie Ferris is prioritising debt reduction after buying the former TSYS issuing business in January. FIS's Q3 revenue rose 27% to $3.45B, including the acquisition.

AI DEVELOPMENTS

🇺🇸 Fiserv launches AI-powered eCommerce tools for Clover merchants. The new capabilities allow US small businesses to build online stores using AI, improve product visibility across search engines and AI shopping assistants, and manage inventory, orders and payments through one connected platform.

🇹🇷 Paribu expands its platform with AI, trading and media tools. Unveiled at its tenth-anniversary event, the three new offerings include Paribu Intelligence, an AI assistant that leaves final trade approval to users; Paribu Terminal, with more than 50 trading modules; and Paribu TV, a dedicated media channel.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS

🇺🇸 Ripple Prime head Marc Asch to step down at year-end. Senior vice president Noel Kimmel will succeed Asch at the prime brokerage formerly known as Hidden Road, which Ripple bought for $1.25B.

🇬🇧 Wirex appoints Starling co-founder Julian Sawyer to its UK board. Sawyer, former CEO of Bitstamp and Zodia Custody, joins as an independent non-executive director of Wirex's UK business, an FCA-regulated e-money institution. He was Starling's chief operating officer until 2019.

🇬🇧 Vanquis confirms John Natalizia as permanent CEO. The Snoop co-founder, deputy CEO since April, succeeds Ian McLaughlin, subject to regulatory approval, and joins the board with immediate effect.

🇳🇬 Alternative Bank appoints Gul Khan as MD and CEO. The former I&M Bank Kenya CEO, who previously held leadership roles at Airtel Money and HSBC Amanah, succeeds founding MD Hassan Yusuf following regulatory approval. He will lead the Nigerian non-interest bank's next phase of growth, focusing on expanding its reach.

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Airwallex to Invest Over $1.6B in Singapore, Adding Around 250 Jobs