SCOOP: Congressional China hawks want Treasury Department to investigate Airwallex’s CCP ties

Rep. John Moolenaar (R., Mich.), the China Select Committee’s Chairman, is putting payments company Airwallex on notice, writing to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent with concerns about Airwallex’s ties to China and the “significant national security risk” posed to sensitive U.S. financial data.

Moolenaar’s letter, which requested a formal investigation by the Treasury Department, is the latest in a series of alarm bells rung by prominent national security experts and lawmakers about Airwallex, a fintech that specializes in cross-border payments processing. The company is responsible for $130 billion in transactions for U.S.-based firms each year. Airwallex’s American customers represent the most critical companies in sectors with critical national security sensitivities — defense tech, AI, and financial services — which rely on intermediary platforms like Brex, Rippling, Deel, Navan, and Zip that help businesses with workforce operations and managing spending.

Moolenaar details Airwallex’s significant presence in China and its links to the Chinese government, which make the company susceptible to the Chinese Community Party’s (CCP) National Intelligence Law, which would require all China-based Airwallex employees to cooperate with the CCP’s intelligence work with no option for refusal or disclosure.

“Airwallex’s substantial mainland China-based workforce, PRC regulatory entanglements, and Chinese investor ownership therefore creates a structural vector through which the PRC could compel access to American financial and personal data,” Moolenaar wrote.

Moolenaar isn’t the first to sound the alarm. In December, Sen. Tom Cotton raised similar concerns about Airwallex in a letter to the Department of Justice and asked for a full investigation into whether the data the company processed was able to be accessed by the CCP. 

Cotton then followed up in June, in a letter to Bessent asking for Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to investigate. His concern to Bessent centered on Airwallex’s access to the Social Security numbers, dates of birth, payroll records, and travel patterns for individuals working at leading American AI labs and defense firms. Cotton also warned against allowed Airwallex to acquire a U.S. banking license, its existing 90 financial licenses, and the company’s acquisition of three businesses in the last year.

Just before Cotton’s second letter, Michael Lucci, the CEO of national security group State Armor, also wrote to Moolenaar and to several other congressional committee chairmen and ranking members, citing claims that around 40 percent of Airwallex employees work in mainland China and in Hong Kong, including those with sensitive engineering, operations, and compliance roles. Lucci also flagged concerns about Tencent’s investment in the company. 

“As Airwallex expands across America’s financial technology ecosystem, its connections to Communist China warrant closer scrutiny,” Lucci explained. “We need the truth about Airwallex.”

For its part, Airwallex’s CEO, Jack Zhang, vehemently defended his company after the news broke, calling the concerns raised in Moolenaar’s letter and subsequent backlash an “obvious smear.” 

Zhang’s defense runs into how Airwallex’s own customer-facing agreements note that its “Hong Kong subsidiary, Airwallex (Hong Kong) Limited, directly processes certain U.S. customer transactions,” Moolenaar noted in his letter, which was also sent to Attorney General Todd Blanche; an Airwallex spokesman also told the Financial Times that the company maintained a “significant presence in Shanghai and Hong Kong,” and that it actively recruits in China because the communist country “remains an important source of world-class engineering and technical talent.” 

Joe Lonsdale, a China hawk, praised the “important work by the House China Committee,” noting that “Airwallex has founders with ties to China, 712 employees there, and Chinese laws that require the company to help CCP intel gathering on demand.”

“If you use Rippling, Deel, Brex, Navan, or Zip, it’s worth asking them if…payments run through Airwallex,” Lonsdale cautioned.

“With the eyes of the federal government and China watchers trained on Airwallex, answers are sure to come sooner or later,” a China expert noted to the Washington Reporter. “In the meantime, any company using the payments processor while these questions remain unanswered could be exposing their customers sensitive financial data.”