Airwallex Closes $19 Million Round for Payments Tech: Travel Startup Funding This Week
Photo Credit: Airwallex launched to the public in 2017 and was founded from (left to right) by Max Li, Xijing Dai, Jack Zhang, Lucy Liu, and Max Li. Airwallex
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This week, startups raised funding to help simplify cross-border transactions, lend consumers money to book travel, offer airport valet services, map interior spaces, automate back-office processes for rental property managers, and split the booking of multiple-night hotel stays. They'll have a happy New Year for sure.
Each week we round up travel startups that have recently received or announced funding. The total publicized this week was more than $41 million.
>>Airwallex, a financial technology startup that enables companies to make cross-border payments efficiently, said it had it had closed its Series A round at $19 million.
Square Peg Capital, Tencent, Sequoia Capital China, Gobi Partners, and MasterCard participated as investors in the round, raised in stages over the past year.
The Melbourne-based business doesn't exclusively focus on travel, but many of its early customers are travel agencies and online marketplaces providing travel, especially in Asia Pacific.
Co-founder and CEO Jack Zhang previously led revamp of payments solutions at Air New Zealand.
Launched this summer, the cross-border payments platform uses machine learning to analyze each transaction that comes through to choose the optimal route for delivering payments from several options, depending on factors
