Why Jack Zhang Is Betting Against SWIFT and Stripe

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