Boston-based payment processing company Flywire raised a $100 million series D round led by Singapore-based Temasek Holdings and existing investors including Bain Capital Ventures and F-Prime Capital.
Flywire enables universities, hospitals and B2B companies better transact in foreign currencies. It was started as peerTransfer in 2009 by Spanish entrepreneur Iker Marcaide to facilitate tuition payments from international students to universities. The company has partnerships with many US-based universities including Boston University, Carnegie Mellon, and Cornell.
peerTransfer became Flywire in 2015 and now works with hospitals and large firms that need international payment processing, although educational institutions make up over 80% of the company's clientele. So far, the company has processed over $8 billion for over 1,400 clients in business, education and healthcare.
Flywire's play is that it cuts out the middlemen including card processing companies like Visa, MasterCard and Amex and payment processing companies like Paypal, Adyen, Square who transmit transactions. Flywire's software connects banks directly to universities and hospitals - because of the volume of transactions processed, which is usually in billions, the company is able to offer lower transaction fees (1%-2% compared to 3%-5%) and also get better foreign exchange conversion rates.
Flywire employs 300 people across North America, Europe and Asia and will use funds from this round to further expand in these markets while making a foray into emerging markets such as Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.
“The company has consistently outperformed expectations and demonstrated its ability to run and grow a global business at scale. The addition of Temasek optimizes their ability to capitalize on that opportunity and provides really valuable insights into the fast-growing Asia-Pac market,” said Matt Harris, managing director at Bain Capital Ventures.
The company is looking to generate $100 million in revenue this year and raised this round at a much higher valuation than its previous round in 2015. Will this be our next Boston unicorn?
