Author: After Gang Ge’s previous article was published, many people sent me private messages. The questions mainly focused on the following categories: “A certain platform looks similar, is it reliable?”, “Is digital currency payment not so troublesome?”, “Is it necessary for Airwallex to make payment so heavy?”
To answer these questions, you can actually take a look at Airwallex founder Jack Zhang’s popular articles on the official WeChat account and X.com (formerly Twitter), “The Most Difficult Path is the Way Out: A Panoramic View of Global Payment Infrastructure.” This article not only explains why Airwallex chose the “heavy asset” path, but also exposes a long-standing secret in the global payment industry.
When choosing a payment platform, corporate customers are often confused by a question: the payment companies they communicate with seem to have similar capabilities. Hundreds of payment companies around the world are using a similar rhetoric to introduce their products: extremely fast arrival, global coverage, serving modern enterprises, and even the functions and interfaces are becoming more and more similar. The problem is that the superficial functions are becoming more and more similar, but the underlying capabilities are vastly different.
Users also cannot see the real differences between platforms in the product introduction, so they repeatedly argue with payment institutions on costs, backgrounds, licenses, risks, and other aspects. What corporate customers really care about is not just the access experience, but whether the capital chain is stable, whether the compliance system is solid, and whether they can successfully develop their business after entering a new market. To judge whether a payment platform is reliable, you should not only look at what the front desk looks like, but also see whether the platform leaves the complexity to itself or passes it on to the customer.
The global payment industry roughly has three paths. The first path is Web3 digital currency payment that bypasses the traditional chain. Although the story is well told, new players have difficulty surviving due to compliance friction and the comprehensive advantages of mainstream payment platforms. The second path is to package traditional infrastructure and rely on partners to package the outdated architecture. Although it takes effect quickly, it does not rewrite the underlying logic. The third path is to build its own global financial infrastructure. This is the path chosen by Airwallex and other companies. Although it is the most difficult and requires high investment, it can keep compliance, technology and the underlying network in its own hands.
For overseas enterprise customers, the most expensive thing is never a payment fee, but the risk of the capital chain. Making the infrastructure solid is essentially to keep the complexity that would have fallen on the customer within its own system and digest it, and use the “heavy” of the platform to exchange for the “light” of the customer.
What corporate customers buy is never a concept, but a more stable, more economical, and more certain value. When the market environment changes, customers rely not on temporarily spliced channels, but on a set of underlying capabilities that can traverse cycles. This is also why Airwallex’s growth logic is more like compound interest, and the “slow” in the front is accumulating potential energy for the subsequent acceleration.
The most difficult part is precisely the part that cannot be outsourced, is most worthy of long-term investment, and can create the most value for customers. For enterprise customers, choosing a global payment platform is essentially choosing a long-term partner that can help you digest complexity. For the industry, shortcuts can run faster, but only by making the most difficult part into its own ability can it go further.
[Gang Ge]
The Infrastructure Imperative: How Airwallex’s Payment Strategy Resonates in the Crypto Market
The recent analysis of Airwallex’s global payment approach offers profound insights that extend far beyond traditional finance, directly affecting how we evaluate blockchain-based payment solutions and DeFi infrastructure. For experienced crypto investors, this perspective provides a critical lens through which to assess the long-term viability of various Web3 payment projects.
Three Paths, One Future
Airwallex’s categorization of global payment infrastructure—Web3 digital currency payments, packaged traditional solutions, and proprietary infrastructure building—mirrors the evolution we’re witnessing in crypto. While many projects initially pursued the “disruptive Web3 path,” the market is increasingly recognizing that sustainable value creation requires building robust, compliant infrastructure rather than merely offering user-facing alternatives.
This realization has significant implications for token valuations. Projects that began with pure disruption narratives but lack substantial infrastructure components are facing recalibration, while those building comprehensive, compliant financial systems are attracting institutional capital and demonstrating more resilient growth patterns.
The Compliance Premium
The article correctly identifies that “the most expensive thing is never a payment fee, but the risk of the capital chain.” This statement should be tattooed on the minds of every crypto investor evaluating payment protocols. In a market where high-profile collapses have demonstrated the real costs of inadequate risk management, compliance isn’t a checkbox—it’s a core value proposition.
For crypto-native payment solutions, this means we’re entering a phase where the ability to navigate complex regulatory environments while maintaining cryptographic guarantees will determine market leaders. Projects that abstract compliance complexity from users while maintaining robust back-end regulatory frameworks will command premium valuations.
Infrastructure as Moat
The crypto market has historically prioritized innovation speed over infrastructure depth. However, Airwallex’s “heavy asset” approach demonstrates how building proprietary infrastructure creates defensible moats. In crypto terms, this translates to projects with:
- Custom Layer 2 solutions rather than relying on public infrastructure
- Proprietary oracle networks with multiple verification layers
- Comprehensive risk management systems integrated at the protocol level
- Regulatory compliance frameworks built into the core architecture rather than bolted on as afterthoughts
These infrastructure investments may not generate immediate hype, but they create the compound growth effects the article describes—slow initial accumulation of capabilities that enable accelerated scaling when market conditions shift.
The Enterprise Crypto Divide
The article highlights that corporate customers prioritize “capital chain stability, compliance systems, and business development capabilities.” This creates a significant opportunity for crypto solutions that can bridge the gap between Web3 innovation and enterprise requirements.
We’re seeing this play out in the market:
– Crypto payment solutions with embedded KYC/AML capabilities are outperforming pure privacy-focused alternatives
– DeFi protocols that offer institutional-grade risk management are attracting significant capital
– Cross-chain solutions with robust compliance frameworks are gaining adoption over more permissionless alternatives
For investors, this means evaluating crypto projects through the same lens that enterprises use—assessing not just the technological innovation but the operational robustness and compliance posture.
The Hidden Complexity Tax
Perhaps the most valuable insight is the distinction between platforms that “leave the complexity to itself or pass it on to the customer.” In crypto, this manifests as the difference between user-friendly protocols that handle complexity internally versus those that require sophisticated technical knowledge from users.
As crypto adoption expands beyond early adopters to mainstream enterprises, the ability to abstract away complexity without compromising security will become a critical competitive advantage. This suggests that projects focused on building intuitive front-ends backed by sophisticated, compliant infrastructure will capture significant market share.
Investment Implications
For experienced crypto investors, this analysis suggests several strategic shifts:
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Infrastructure-first evaluation: Prioritize projects with substantial underlying infrastructure components over those with slick interfaces but thin technical foundations
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Compliance as alpha: View compliance capabilities not as costs but as competitive advantages that will determine which projects achieve institutional adoption
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The long game: Recognize that the most valuable crypto projects will be those that patiently build comprehensive infrastructure, even when more superficial alternatives generate faster short-term growth
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Enterprise alignment: Assess crypto payment solutions based on how well they address enterprise priorities—stability, compliance, and business development—not just their technological innovation
As the crypto market matures, Airwallex’s insight becomes increasingly prescient: “the most difficult part is precisely the part that cannot be outsourced, is most worthy of long-term investment, and can create the most value for customers.” In a market crowded with similar-looking solutions, the ability to build and maintain robust, compliant infrastructure will separate enduring value creators from temporary hype cycles.