The fascinating story of a founder who rejected $1.2 billion from Stripe

I rejected a $1.2 billion acquisition offer from Stripe and built an$ 8 billion company instead.

This is the story of why I said NO:

In 2018, Patrick Collison flew to meet our team.

Stripe was worth ~$20 billion at that time.

Whereas Airwallex was only a Series B startup most people had never heard of.

There was one question on my mind: Why did the most valuable fintech company in the world want to buy us?

In fintech, there's a big difference between processing payment & holding money.

Processing payments means you swipe a card & money goes from A to B.

Holding money = banking. You store balances, hold multiple currencies & pay out.

One is easy. But the other is way too hard.

To process payments, you just need agreements with Visa & Mastercard.

But to hold money, you need something called an e-money license which lets you offer banking-like solutions.

But there's a catch...

To get an e-money license, every country has its own regulator and its own rules.

So you can't just expand. You have to wait, get approved & invest resources.

Sometimes it takes 3-4 years/country to get the license.

In 2018, Stripe had e-money licenses in only 2 places: the US and the UK.

So if you wanted to hold money & store balances in different currencies Stripe couldn't do that.

But Airwallex had the license in dozens of countries which put us years ahead of Stripe.

So it didn't make sense to be acquired by them.

Stripe is good at that what they do. But they're only at the front door of the payment system.

Global cross-border payments is a $200 trillion market and Stripe is < 1% of that.

Behind that door is the entire infrastructure that SWIFT built which moves money around the world.

And nobody had built a modern version of that.

I realized I had two options:

1: Join Stripe, help them fill a gap in their product, and be employee X at someone else's company.

2: Keep building & try to become the infrastructure layer that every global business runs on.

One was safer. One was the reason I became a founder.

But I'd be lying if I said it was purely strategic.

I was almost 34 at that time.

The Stripe deal came with a 5-year lockup which is standard for acquisitions.

After Stripe deal, I'd be 39. But then what? Would I have the energy to build a new startup?

It's rare to find an idea that keeps compounding. You don't just stumble into them.

If I sold Airwallex, stayed at Stripe for five years, what would I do next?

I genuinely didn't know. And that scared me more.

"What if I feel regret that I haven't lived my life?"

I've spent most of my life trying to figure out what happiness means.

Before Airwallex, I started side businesses while working at a bank. But none of them made me happy.

Airwallex was different. It felt like an ambition.

And I wasn't sure I'd get that feeling at Stripe.

Author

Ai Base Network (ABN), ABN ASIA was founded by people with deep roots in academia, with work experience in the US, Holland, Hungary, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam. ABN Asia is where academia and technology meet opportunity. With our cutting-edge solutions and competent software development services, we're helping businesses level up and take on the global scene. Our commitment: Faster. Better. More reliable. In most cases: Cheaper as well.

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