Flywire Leverages Software, Technology, and Industry Expertise to Streamline Payment Processing for Clients

In a Nutshell:  An increasingly interconnected world demands that payments travel from sender to recipient as seamlessly as possible. Flywire combines its proprietary global payments network, next-gen payments platform and vertical-specific software to deliver the most important and complex payments for its clients and their customers. The company serves clients in the education, healthcare, B2B  travel industries 

Consumers planning to make a relatively expensive purchase, such as buying a vacation package or paying tuition and other higher education expenses, may do a lot of research before finalizing their purchase. But even the most thorough researcher won’t likely investigate how their payment will arrive at its intended recipient.

Payment processors move money from one party to another, providing buyers and sellers with the confidence that transactions will occur as they expect them to. Flywire does even more than this. Flywire, a global payments enablement and software company, helps clients get paid and leverages software to augment its clients’ workflows. Flywire’s clients integrate their payments platform into their existing apps and workflows and have access to a suite of solutions including tailored invoicing, settlement and reconciliation tools, single sign-on, and rich payments functionality that spans integrated checkout, recurring payments, and split payouts. 

We spoke with Mohit Kansal, Flywire’s Senior Vice President of Global Payments and Payer Services, to learn more about the company’s innovative offerings.

Kansal said Flywire began as a business that helped educational institutions receive money from students around the world. He said Flywire’s founder was inspired to start the company when a payment he sent from Spain didn’t arrive at its destination — a university in the U.S. 

Flywire has expanded its services since its early years. Kansal said Flywire used to sell cross-border payment solutions solely to institutions in the U.S. education sector.

“Fast forward to today, and we’re selling to clients in more than 50 countries,” Kansal said. “We operate in four sectors — global education, travel, healthcare, and B2B industries like manufacturing, distribution, franchising and more. We sell multiple products, including cross-border payments, domestic payments, receivables, and payables. And we’re doing a lot more things. The business has quickly become very complex.”

Kansal said Flywire’s solutions sit at the intersection of software and payments. He said the company performs integrations into the systems that finance, IT, and other departments use to ensure payment updates occur promptly.

Kansal said numerous companies offer payment services, but where Flywire excels is in deeply understanding the industries they partner with to create solutions that align with their needs. He said Flywire removes the burden of managing payments for its clients.

Kansal said the company’s software, industry expertise, and payment network help it deliver solutions its clients appreciate.

“That’s where the magic happens,” Kansal said. “It’s not any one thing that we offer — it’s everything together. We completely remove the pain of managing payments for our clients. If one of our clients is involved in moving money from one part of the world to another, we’ll handle any issues with the payment so our client doesn’t have to.”

Flywire’s expansion into other industries was driven in part by client feedback. A conversation with one of the company’s clients in the education industry revealed that its medical campus faced payment challenges similar to those of educational institutions. The conversation complemented the company’s strategic planning and inspired Flywire to consider offering solutions to the healthcare industry. 

The needs of Flywire’s clients inform the company’s product development, and Kansal said Flywire enjoys hearing about its clients’ payment needs because it can develop solutions for them. Flywire has quickly and efficiently expanded internationally thanks to its next-gen payments platform and proprietary payment network.

Businesses in different industries use different operating methods, systems and more – which is why Flywire tailors its products to meet industry-specific needs. Kansal said the company helps businesses get paid, and it can process payments of all sizes.

“We can help clients with involved payment issues,” Kansal said. “Some clients don’t just need a payment — they may need a different disbursement schedule from what is standard. We like that type of complexity. And, obviously, there are nuances in each of the sectors we work with.”

Payment standards differ from country to country, which can make moving money across borders on non-card payment rails difficult. Payers in regions like India and China also need to comply with guidelines set out by their regulators, which can be a complex and cumbersome process.

Flywire is uniquely suited to facilitating these payments. And they do this while maintaining PCI compliance and security requirements, managing regulatory complexities of cross-border payments, and more. This is a critical piece of the payments ecosystem they have invested in.

Kansal said some payments require Flywire to calculate taxes based on the transaction’s size or purpose. The company knows exactly what type of information needs to accompany payments to allow for proper reconciliation.

Clients may not know the local method of payment in a foreign country, but Flywire can offer multiple payment methods and find solutions to address a client’s international payment concerns.

Flywire prides itself on a continuous feedback loop, as well as around the clock customer support, to ensure its solutions and services match customer expectations. Kansal said Flywire holds sessions where sets of clients on the company’s advisory board tell Flywire what’s happening in their worlds. He said clients also communicate directly with their relationship manager and regularly share issues with them.

“In terms of feedback, it really depends on the vertical,” Kansal said. “We do conferences where we showcase our products and collect feedback. In terms of supporting issues clients have, we have a very active customer support function. We have experts who help clients when they have a problem with a payment. We specialize in handling exceptions, and there will be exceptions when it comes to payments. And we ensure all payments are processed in a compliant way.”

Kansal said Flywire receives client testimonials thanking the company for solving its payments-related problems. He said the company’s clients in the education sector used to send Flywire pictures of stacks of checks they had received from 529 providers that the clients couldn’t reconcile.

Kansal said the educational institutions required assistance because the checks they received from students had missing information. He said Flywire digitized the process of accepting student payments, and its solutions have substantially minimized the time required for educational institutions to process student payments.

Kansal said Flywire’s solutions also reduce stress for individuals making payments to institutions of higher education. He said students who send a $30,000 check for tuition can be worried when their school doesn’t confirm receipt of their payment quickly.

Watch on

“Our solutions allow schools to focus on more important things,” Kansal said. “They shouldn’t have to look at bank messages to figure out whose mom or aunt submitted a payment on behalf of a student. And they shouldn’t have to spend time figuring out if people are submitting partial or full payments. There are better things they could be doing with their time.”

Flywire’s solutions can save its clients time and money. Kansal said Flywire deploys solutions in a way that minimizes client costs, and clients enjoy the experience of working with the company’s technology and team. He said Flywire has expedited healthcare payments to allow patients to access treatments and surgeries faster.

Kansal said he is excited about Flywire’s growth opportunities and its plans for the future.

“We have a phenomenal team, and we serve customers all over the world,” Kansal said. “There’s a lot of runway for us to keep growing and solving problems for our customers.”