Payment processing startup Flywire announced Thursday it closed on a $120 million Series E round led by Goldman Sachs, bringing its total funding raised to $260 million.
The Boston-based company also announced it acquired Simplee, a SaaS startup out of Palo Alto that delivers payment software for the health care industry.
Flywire makes international payment processing easier. The platform works by partnering with card processing companies like Visa and Mastercard and payment processing companies like PayPal and Square. Flywire’s software connects banks to its clients, offering lower transaction fees because of the large volume it processes. This also means users can get better foreign exchange rates.
Founded as peerTransfer in 2009 by Spanish businessman Iker Marcaide, the company was originally created to help colleges process international students’ tuition payments. Since becoming Flywire in 2015, the company says the majority of its clientele is still universities. However, it claims to have processed more than $12 billion in payments across the education, health care, travel and technology industries.
Kelly Hartman, Flywire’s chief people officer, told Built In the company's acquisition of Simplee will allow it to do even more work in complex industries like health care.
“The U.S. health care market is massive and the payment systems and process are ill-equipped to handle the new requirements where patients own an increasing share of the payment responsibility,” Hartman said. “The acquisition of Simplee accelerates Flywire’s ability to digitize health care finance and improve patient engagement and affordability. We can now offer hospitals and health care systems more capabilities to address their operational needs as well as the needs of their patients.”
Flywire said in its statement that this most recent funding will be used to build out its platform and grow its team. CEO Mike Massaro told BostInno the company plans to hire about 100 more people. Those hires, according to Hartman, will include the company’s marketing, sales, client services, compliance and finance departments, with about 50 hires in Boston and the rest in its offices in Tel Aviv, Palo Alto and Singapore.
