Airwallex Posts 107% Growth In Singapore As SMEs Turn To FinTech
Hey Digital Banking Fanatic!
Airwallex just reported 107 percent revenue growth in Singapore for FY2025. Transaction volume climbed 93 percent year on year.
That marks the second consecutive year of triple-digit growth in the market...
Singapore sits at the center of Airwallex’s global operations alongside San Francisco. Local headcount expanded 62 percent in 2025, with engineering roles growing 130 percent as the company doubled down on AI, data, and product development.
Now the demand side is catching up.
Airwallex surveyed 250 SME decision makers in Singapore, and the findings are worth paying attention to. 73 percent cite rising costs as their top concern in 2026, up from 62 percent last year.
The pattern is becoming clearer: SMEs are becoming a key driver of cross-border payments infrastructure across the region.
Another signal of where the market is moving. Earlier, I covered how Airwallex strengthened its infrastructure through the acquisition of Paynuri, expanding its global payments capabilities.
You can read that here 👉: Airwallex Acquires Paynuri to Deepen Its Global Payments Infrastructure.
Several other developments caught my attention today. Scroll down 👇 And let’s dive in.
Cheers,
INSIGHTS
📊 A comparison of customer deposits 👇 Revolut is the largest neobank, $40B in customer balances, followed closely by Nu, and SoFi.
NEWS
🇸🇬 Airwallex delivers triple-digit revenue growth in Singapore. FY2025 revenue in the country grew 107% year-on-year (YoY), with transaction volume rising 93% over the same period. Along with its strong commercial momentum, Airwallex’s Singapore headcount grew by 62% in 2025, with hires across its Corporate, Commercial, and Product, Engineering and Design (PED) functions.
🇩🇪 N26 reduced its annual loss to €42 million in 2024, down from €102.4 million the previous year, as revenue from interest and commissions grew. The improvement was driven by new products, stronger payment services, and premium accounts, along with a nearly 5% reduction in administrative expenses.
🇹🇷 Kazakhstan’s Freedom Holding moves into Türkiye’s banking market. The bank’s key shareholders, Ozyol Holding and National Bank of Kuwait, have agreed to transfer 99.31% of TurkishBank’s capital to Freedom Finansal Hizmetler AŞ, the Turkish subsidiary of Freedom Holding Corp.
🇬🇧 Tandem Bank appoints Stephen Jones as new Chair. An industry veteran, Stephen is currently Executive Chair of Investment Banking at Panmure Liberum and brings decades of senior leadership experience from across the UK banking sector, including senior executive roles at Santander and Barclays.
🇬🇪 Uzbekistan’s Uzum valuation leaps over 50% in seven months to $2.3B. Uzum plans to use the new funding to expand its FinTech infrastructure and deepen its product offerings across both commerce and financial services. The startup plans to invest in additional ATMs, payment acceptance infrastructure, and point-of-sale systems.
🇩🇪 Vivid surpasses 100,000 SME customers and redefines cash management with multi-currency interest. With Vivid’s multi-currency Interest Accounts, companies can hold USD and GBP balances directly within their Interest Account, earning up to 5% p.a. during the promotional period, and use these funds for payments via SWIFT without currency conversion or separate account setups.
🇰🇷 KakaoBank stablecoin denial sparks confusion. KakaoBank has firmly denied claims of joint stablecoin development with the Kaia DLT Foundation, creating significant confusion in South Korea’s rapidly evolving digital currency landscape. This denial follows Kaia’s now-deleted announcement on its official Japanese X account.
🇺🇸 PactFi raises $25m series A to modernize private credit market with first secure, end-to-end operational platform. With the new capital, PactFi will capitalize on its first-mover advantage and accelerate its role as core infrastructure for the private credit ecosystem by investing.
🇺🇸 Sigma360 raises $17 million to fund financial crime prevention. The company says its Series B round will help it strengthen its risk intelligence datasets, deepen its artificial intelligence (AI) automation capabilities, and expand Sigma360’s presence among financial institutions.
🇲🇽 Mercado Pago believes it is getting closer to obtaining a banking license in Mexico. According to Mexico's head, Pedro Rivas, the FinTech expects progress in 2026, though final approval will still require a regulatory audit before operations can begin.
🇿🇦 South Africa launches new bank-based smart ID system. By integrating banking infrastructure with government systems via a secure API-based gateway, the department has eliminated the necessity for paper application forms, prior online bookings, or separate visits for biometric capture.
🇺🇸 Elon Musk confirms early public access launch of X Money next month. Musk’s vision of transforming social media into an “everything app” has been gradually taking shape with the development of X Money. The latter is supposed to be a new payment feature designed to bring financial services directly to the platform.
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