Airwallex and OurCrowd Team to Make Startup Investing Easier

Airwallex has joined forces with venture investing platform OurCrowd to make it easier to invest in startups.

The partnership, announced Wednesday (Aug. 2), lets institutions and individuals invest in startups anywhere, with their local currency and with a single button click.

“Until now, when making a startup investment, investors had to convert their local currency into U.S. dollars and then wire it,” Airwallex, a global payments platform, said in a news release.

“With this new partnership, OurCrowd’s investors from over 195 countries can invest in global startups on a digital platform in their own currency easily, quickly and with favorable terms.”

The collaboration sees OurCrowd integrating Airwallex’s API to offer users the ability to invest in their own local currency, rather than being restricted to U.S. dollar-denominated wire transfers.

“With embedded finance, modern businesses of all sizes can bring global connectivity to customers by offering their own local payment solutions and minimizing FX [foreign exchange] pain points,” said Pranav Sood , Airwallex’s general manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

“From streamlining payment processes for investors and startups to minimizing FX costs, embedded finance is simplifying the way businesses operate across borders.”

The partnership comes at a time when early-stage tech startups in the U.S. are seeing a significant drop in venture capital spending .

“In the second quarter of 2023, American investors backed 3,011 startup deals, which is a third fewer than the same period in 2022,” PYMNTS wrote last month. “Venture capital firms also spent less, with the total amount just shy of $40 billion, close to half of what was spent last year. The largest drop in funding occurred in angel or seed deals for startups in the concept phase.”

However, some experts have argued that the declining numbers may not necessarily be a bad thing, as there was likely a glut of startups raising money during the pandemic, and a slower pace of starting companies could be better for the market.

Still, founders, investors and venture capitalists all worry the current crunch could end up being as stark as the dotcom bust of the early 2000s.

Against this backdrop, some startups are have begun selling themselves to larger companies, launching a wave of takeovers.