(Screenshot of Airwallex's website)

SYDNEY, March 26 (Xinhua) -- Financial tech company, Airwallex, officially achieved the status of "unicorn" on Tuesday, a term given to startups valued at over 1 billion U.S. dollars.

Started by university students in the Australian city of Melbourne and now based in China's Hong Kong, Airwallex was designed to make cross border business transactions cheaper and easier.

"We started Airwallex because we knew there was a better way to make global payments," Airwallex co-founder and chief executive officer Jack Zhang said.

"Our mission is to build a worldwide, technology-driven financial infrastructure that will help our customers, including marketplaces, online sellers and SMEs, grow their businesses globally."

A recent round of funding topped off at 100 million U.S. dollars and was led by DST Global, which in the past has backed tech superstars like Facebook, Airbnb, and Spotify.

"The growing eCommerce industry needs a technology-focused payments network that is reliable, cost-effective and provides data transparency, Airwallex has built such a network," managing partner of DST Global Tom Stafford said.

The funding will be used to support global expansion into markets in the United States, Europe and South-East Asia as well as to grow the company's product and service list.