Founded in Australia, the financial technology company said its Israeli operations, which will begin on Thursday, would be a first step towards expanding across Europe, the Middle East and Africa in 2023. It already serves a number of Israeli businesses.

Or Liban, who will head the company’s Israel operations, said the country’s high-tech ecosystem, in which startups look to be global from the outset, was a main factor in expanding to Tel Aviv.

“There’s quite a lot of startups that might be relevant for our mergers and acquisition strategy, namely around cyber security, fraud detection, threat prevention. It’s a very vibrant ecosystem,” Liban told Reuters.

He noted that while there were no deals currently in the works, there were many opportunities for the company.

Airwallex is valued at $5.5 billion and has raised $900 million from investors including Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia, Tencent, Square Peg, Lone Pine Capital and 1835i and processes more than $50 billion in transactions a year.