Airwallex has seen rapid global expansion and product diversification in recent years. How would you describe the company’s evolution, and what do you see as its core differentiators in today’s competitive fintech landscape?

In nearly a decade of operations, Airwallex’s evolution has been defined by a relentless focus on solving the challenges businesses face when moving money globally. What started as a simple need to pay overseas suppliers for a Melbourne-based coffee business has grown into a global platform powering modern financial infrastructure. Instead of building on legacy systems, Airwallex took a first-principles approach - developing our own payment rails, acquiring 60+ licenses worldwide and forming direct partnerships with major card schemes like Visa and Mastercard. The business has seen tremendous growth and now serves over 150,000 businesses worldwide, including scaling its employee base to 1,700 across 37 locations.

What differentiates Airwallex is the sheer breadth and depth of our financial infrastructure, which enables customers, ranging from startups to large enterprises, to power the lifecycle of global financial services. We are also a truly global business with one of the most extensive licensing portfolios for a fintech company, with licences in key markets like the UK, EU, US, Asia and Brazil (and more to come!).

At Airwallex, we’re not only building an enduring company that can stand the test of time, but also creating the future of global banking. We’ll continue to innovate our product offering and market reach to support businesses worldwide with their growth journeys.

From multi-currency wallets and FX to corporate cards and spend management, Airwallex has built a broad product suite. What innovations or customer use cases are you most excited about for 2025?

As we enter a new era of innovation, we’re excited to continue supporting businesses scale across borders by making it cheaper, more efficient and easier to hold, convert and send money internationally. From vendor onboarding to reconciliation - we’ve built a single, full-stack platform that simplifies complex financial workflows for businesses. It’s this end-to-end visibility and automation that’s transforming how companies scale globally. We’re also doubling down on AI to enable a fully autonomous finance functions - freeing up time, increasing accuracy, and redefining the office of the CFO, while maintaining the best-in-class product experience.

Looking ahead, where do you see Airwallex in five years? What does success look like — is it geographic scale, product depth, or something else?

We envision success as a blend of geographic expansion, talent hiring/retention and deepening our product suite - powering everything from startups to the world’s largest enterprises as they scale across borders. Success for us isn’t just about geographic reach, although expanding into new markets such as EMEA, LATAM and APAC, remains core to our strategy. It’s also about depth: delivering a truly comprehensive, AI-driven platform that automates and orchestrates every aspect of financial operations - from payments and treasury to spend management and beyond. Bringing on and retaining world-class talent will ultimately help us achieve our goals - to make global business as seamless as local, and to empower the next generation of entrepreneurs to build without borders, complexity, or compromise.

What personal habits or leadership principles have helped you stay effective and grounded as Airwallex continues to grow at pace?

My leadership style is rooted in producing high-quality, and in some cases, career-defining work, where you’re known in the market as someone worth knowing. When I join a new team, I always share a “working with Immy” document to set clear expectations and principles. I ask my teams to hold each other accountable for doing their best work while following six core principles:

• Ownership: Take full ownership and be fully accountable for all your deals and projects

• Dive deep: Go deep and understand the root cause of each customer problem, keep learning and document it

• Simplify: Abstract complexity and don’t use jargon. Make things simple to understand and to grasp

• Be frugal: Accomplish more with less. Be self-sufficient and mindful when asking others’ time by providing clarity on where you need help to drive the best outcome

• Be direct and respectful: Address issues openly and constructively, better still, help them course correct

• Execution Mindset: Default to execution over deliberation and inaction - lean teams know how to roll something back and iterate

I also encourage and build leaders from within by investing early in top performers. Whenever a leadership role opens up within my org, my first thought is who can step up internally to fill this role? I look for leaders who deeply understand our product, our internal workings and who have a high understanding and conviction to create real impact.

Finally, I bring revenue KPI’s to life through OKRs - translating goals into tangible team initiatives that create ownership and drive results for the team and wider business goals.

Do you have any personal goals that you're currently working toward or hoping to achieve this year?

This year, I’ve set a few personal and professional goals that energize me both in and outside of work. A big one for me is making sure I show up and play an even bigger role at industry events - whether it’s speaking on panels, presenting on stage, or hosting thought-provoking dinners. Expect to see me more front and center representing Airwallex.

It’s very important for me to stay on top of the AI breakthroughs and use case applicability to the financial services industry. My aim is to read at least one report and listen to one AI-focussed podcast each week. There’s a lot of great material out there, but The Dwarkesh Podcast and 80,000 Hours have been standout listens so far.

And a personal one for me. I’ve always loved live music, but with two kids who are under five and a post-Covid life, gigs have taken a backseat… so I’ve made a personal commitment to attend one live show each month in 2025 - so far, I’m still on track!

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