The financial technology company Airwallex was once the brightest star in the field of cross-border payments.
This giant founded by Chinese Americans and headquartered in Melbourne and Hong Kong, relied on its huge network to process thousands of cross-border transactions per second, and its valuation once soared to about US$8 billion.
Its shareholder list includes top capitals such as Tencent, Sequoia, and DST Global. Co-founder Lucy Liu also became the richest woman in New Zealand in 2025 with assets of 700 million New Zealand dollars (approximately 3 billion yuan).
However, in early 2026, a mandatory audit order from the Australian financial regulator AUSTRAC tore off the unicorn’s gorgeous coat.
January 22, 2026 was the darkest moment for SkyCloud. AUSTRAC officially issued a mandatory audit order, with a mandatory audit period of 180 days.
Regulators suspected that Kongkong Yunhui had deficiencies in fulfilling statutory compliance obligations, and the audit focused on assessing whether its anti-money laundering compliance plan, customer due diligence measures and suspicious matter reporting mechanism complied with the relevant requirements of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006.
This supervision is aimed at the fatal “money mule” loophole, which is suspected of being used by criminals to use fake accounts to transfer illegal funds related to child pornography.
The core of AUSTRAC’s audit focused on three fatal issues: First, the transaction monitoring system failed. Air Cloud Hui’s annual recurring revenue exceeded US$1 billion and its annual payment processing amount reached AU$345 billion. However, the transaction monitoring system was seriously mismatched with the business scale and could not effectively cope with it.
Risks; second, the risk of “money mules” is out of control, with criminals transferring funds through fake accounts, and even using the platform as a channel for child pornography-related payments; third, there is a lack of executive governance, and AUSTRAC questioned the lack of supervision of compliance work by the board of directors and senior management of SkyCloud.
Air Cloud has issued a response statement through its official website or news room, stating that it will “fully cooperate with AUSTRAC’s external audit review.”
There is currently about a month until the end of the mandatory audit, and whether it will pass smoothly is still uncertain.
This is not the first time problems have occurred in Sky Cloud Collection.
At the end of 2019, a customer was defrauded of US$18.2 million (approximately HKD 142.5 million) when trading through Kong Yunhui’s Hong Kong payment channel, causing the Hong Kong police to freeze the same amount in Kong Yunhui’s bank account.
In August 2019, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange also reported Kongyunhui as a subject suspected of illegally handling foreign exchange payment business.
More than two months after the audit order was issued, that is, in early April 2026, Kongkong Yunhui took countermeasures.
The company urgently appointed two heavyweights to the board of directors. Elana Rubin, a member of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s governance committee, serves as the Australian board chair, and former New Zealand Prime Minister Sir Bill English serves as an independent non-executive director.
In addition, on April 13, SkyCloud announced the appointment of Carolyn Renzin as Chief Compliance Officer, responsible for leading the construction of the global regulatory and compliance system.
At the center of the storm in the sky, Liu Yueting has attracted much attention.
In 2025, she became the richest woman in New Zealand. She was born in northern China, moved to New Zealand at the age of 12, and later co-founded Air Cloud Exchange with Jack Zhang and others.
She is mainly responsible for the license application and compliance implementation of global business. However, in the audit order of AUSTRAC, the lack of supervision of compliance work by senior executives of Sky Cloud was questioned, which was in contrast to the “stable and compliant” image she created.
For Kongkong Yunhui, IPO in the United States was once an important goal.
On the eve of being investigated by AUSTRAC, the company was in the critical preparation period for listing in the United States. It would complete a G round of financing of US$330 million at the end of 2025, with its valuation soaring to US$8 billion.
However, the regulatory hammer in January 2026 brought the IPO plan to an abrupt halt.
At present, Kongkong Yunhui has not officially announced that it will “give up the IPO”, but during the mandatory audit period, it is difficult to promote the IPO.
If the audit results are unfavorable, the company may not only face huge fines, but its valuation will also be severely tested. If investors trigger the gambling agreement and require withdrawal, the company’s cash flow will be under tremendous pressure.
The experience of Kongkong Yunhui is a microcosm of the global financial technology wave.
It uses technology to break down old barriers and allows small and medium-sized enterprises to enjoy cheap and fast cross-border payment services, but it also exposes fatal risks in its “running wild”.
For Liu Yueting and Jack Zhang, compliance is the bottom line for the survival and development of enterprises. Whether Kongkong Yunhui can withstand the test of “life and death” deserves attention.
