CEO sings the blues but still positions himself: Airwallex recruits a stablecoin development team, offering a salary of seven million that draws attention.

Just last month, the CEO of Airwallex, Jack Zhang, publicly criticized stablecoins, stating that they "are not cheaper at all." Now, the company is quickly opening engineering positions to build a complete stablecoin payment platform. This 180-degree shift in attitude also shows that TradFi tech must explore layouts in the face of new infrastructure to avoid falling behind.

Singing the blues while recruiting? Airwallex job openings expose the vision of the stablecoin platform.

According to the latest recruitment information released, the fintech company Airwallex is forming a technical team to develop a stablecoin platform, aiming to create an infrastructure that allows users to buy, hold, send, and settle stablecoins globally. The system emphasizes support for near-instant global payments, on-chain liquidity, and seamless exchange between fiat and stablecoin, maximizing payment efficiency.

Airwallex is building a stablecoin platform team

Whether it’s a shift in strategy or part of masterful plan to crowd source intel, I’m here for it.

2 new eng roles have opened to build stablecoin infrastructure that will: • Let customers and internal systems buy, hold,… pic.twitter.com/kiFiUAT1dY

— Chuk (@chuk_xyz) July 6, 2025

At the same time, in terms of compensation, Airwallex offers an annual salary of SGD 165,000 to 240,000 and SGD 205,000 to 320,000 for senior backend software engineers and engineering managers, respectively, which is approximately NT$3.75 million to NT$7.28 million, excluding stocks and bonuses.

Paxos product manager Chuk stated: "There are many benefits to cross-border fintech companies like Airwallex and Wise, including reducing foreign exchange risk, accelerating fund availability, promoting stablecoin payment adoption, and earning returns from idle funds."

The line between fintech and cryptocurrency will become increasingly blurred. Soon, everything will just be fintech.

The CEO just expressed pessimism: stablecoins are neither faster nor cheaper.

Just a month ago, the company's CEO Jack Zhang clearly stated on X that he believes stablecoins have no meaning in real-world applications and questioned their actual value in cross-border transfers:

Airwallex's current cross-border transfer cost is below 0.01%, and it is completed instantly. How can you be cheaper than free and faster than instant?

He pointed out that even Stripe's promotion of stablecoin applications in Latin America and Africa is merely taking advantage of regulatory arbitrage, and it does not help with transfers of mainstream currencies.

(Is stablecoin just a hype? Airwallex CEO publicly criticizes stablecoins: they are not cheaper at all)

Community rebuttal: As long as the traditional layer of exploitation exists, stablecoins have meaning.

These remarks angered many blockchain practitioners at the time. Richard Liu, the founder of Huma Finance, rebutted, pointing out that Jack's so-called "optimal solution" is actually built on an "outdated and predatory old financial system": "The true value of stablecoins lies in creating a new payment structure that no longer relies on banks and intermediaries, rather than simply saving that 0.01%."

At the same time, users have revealed that the low fees touted by Airwallex actually come with many hidden costs, including account opening fees, account maintenance fees, and deposit fees, which can total between 0.2% to 0.5%, far higher than the costs of on-chain transfers.

However, Airwallex's quiet布局 nowadays seems to reflect a shift in attitude. After all, with the company's position as a multinational financial company and its moat of multiple compliance licenses, it seeks to get ahead in the new payment infrastructure and expand its stablecoin布局, which is also expected to enable it to overtake crypto-native payment startups.

( From Infini deactivating financial cards to TradFi layout stablecoins: What is the ultimate solution for crypto payments? )

At the Crossroads of the Payment Revolution: Lowering Costs or Reshaping the Rules?

Airwallex's current transformation reflects that the entire payment industry is at a crossroads. On one side, there are traditional systems striving to lower fees and shorten processing times, while on the other side, there is a new system advocating for on-chain technology to simplify payment channels.

For Airwallex, the issue is not whether stablecoins work, but rather the acknowledgment that they do, which implies that their past business model needs to be reinvented. For the market, this is undoubtedly a question that all fintech giants cannot avoid, a choice for a new era.

This article discusses how the CEO remains in position despite the downturn: Airwallex is recruiting a stablecoin development team, with a seven million annual salary attracting attention. This was first reported by Chain News ABMedia.