Stripe Takes Aim at Airwallex With Australia Treasury Trial
Synopsis
The payments company is piloting its Treasury platform with Australian startups as it prepares to enter the business banking market.
Stripe has turned up the heat on Airwallex’s Stripe Treasury Australia competition with its quiet rollout of a beta version of Treasury to a select handful of Australian startup founders before opening it up more broadly.
The acquisition marks a push by Stripe to diversify beyond its core payment services, positioning itself more competitively with Airwallex and Wise in the space of business banking and cross-border payments.
Selected businesses gain access to local business accounts, corporate virtual cards and treasury tools on a single platform through the beta. In addition, Stripe now supports multiple currencies and stablecoins for eligible businesses, allowing them to avoid setting up new banking relationships for each market they operate in.
The next countries planned for the Treasury launch, after initial releases in the United States and United Kingdom, are Australia and Canada.
Treasury Strategy Broadens
The Australian pilot is in line with Stripe’s wider efforts to expand its offerings beyond payments into financial services. As many companies operate internationally, there is growing interest in financial service platforms that can provide business accounts, payments, expense management and cross-border money movement.
This new offering overlaps with the services Airwallex offers, a fintech firm that has concentrated its services on global accounts, cross-border payments, expense management, and foreign exchange.
The firm, based in Melbourne, has secured financial licenses in over 85 countries and regions, and has customers globally in over 150 countries and regions.
Growing Market Competition
In 2025, businesses processed a total of US$1.9 trillion on Stripe, a year-over-year increase of 34 percent. In February of 2025, a secondary sale of its shares valued Stripe at US$91.5 billion. Airwallex, meanwhile, raised an additional US$300 million in capital last year that boosted the company to a US$6.2 billion valuation.
The funding will be used to finance its international expansion plans, including expansion into Japan, South Korea, the Middle East, and Latin America, according to a company statement. Overall, the market is still shifting toward digital business finance, and in Australia’s 2025 Consumer Payments Survey by the Reserve Bank of Australia, 73 percent of transactions were made by card.
Australia Joins Next Phase
Australia is the first country outside of its original Treasury launch market for Stripe to have introduced its new platform.
According to the company, Australia and Canada are slated to be its next markets for expansion into business banking internationally.
Although the beta trial is restricted to a few startup founders, it indicates the growing rivalry among Australian financial providers, as they move beyond just processing payments to provide treasury services, multicurrency accounts, and corporate spending solutions.
Source: Capital Brief
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Pooja Malik is a business journalist with over six years of experience covering startups, entrepreneurship, and emerging trends. She has previously worked with leading media platforms such as YourStory Media and BW BusinessWorld, where she reported on business, policy, and market developments. Currently, she serves as Editor at The Inspirepreneur Magazine, where she writes and edits stories across business, lifestyle, and travel, with a focus on clarity, accuracy, and reader relevance.
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