Flywire Review

Flywire is a Boston-headquartered payments platform, incorporated in July 2009 as peerTransfer to move international tuition money and renamed Flywire in 2016, that now collects large, often cross-border receivables for about 5,300 clients in education, healthcare, travel and B2B — more than 3,300 educational institutions, more than 150 healthcare systems and roughly 1,800 travel and business clients. It listed on Nasdaq as FLYW in May 2021, processed $37.6 billion in total payment volume in 2025 on revenue of $623 million and net income of $13.5 million, and has bought its way into new verticals: Simplee (healthcare, 2020), WPM (UK universities, 2021), Cohort Go (2022), StudyLink (Australian admissions, 2023), Invoiced (B2B receivables, 2024) and Sertifi (hotel payments, $330 million, February 2025). Clients sign negotiated agreements and Flywire publishes no rate card; its revenue is a percentage of each payment that varies by payment method, currency pair and region, plus fixed fees on domestic transactions, and the payer sees the total, including any Flywire fee and the currency conversion, before confirming. Its subsidiary Flywire Global Corp. holds money-transmitter licences in 46 US jurisdictions. Two things temper the picture: a securities class action, Hickman v. Flywire, has been pending in the Eastern District of New York since July 2025 over how the company described the effect of student-visa policy on its growth, and Flywire has voluntarily reported apparent sanctions violations to OFAC after an internal review. Its Trustpilot score is 4.0 from about 3,150 reviews, mostly written by students and patients paying through it rather than the institutions that choose it.

What it is

Flywire began in Boston in July 2009 as peerTransfer Corporation, founded by Iker Marcaide, a Spanish MIT Sloan MBA student who had found wiring his own tuition to Boston slow and expensive, and built a way for international students to pay universities in their own currency without a bank wire. The corporate name changed to Flywire in 2016 as the business moved beyond education, and Mike Massaro, who joined as head of sales in March 2012, has been chief executive since December 2013. The company listed on Nasdaq under the ticker FLYW on May 26, 2021, and it is now headquartered at 141 Tremont Street in Boston with a presence in 16 countries, more than 1,400 employees in 15 offices, and a payment network covering more than 140 currencies and 240 countries and territories.

It has grown by buying its way into adjacent verticals. Simplee, a healthcare payments and collections platform, came in February 2020 for about $86.5 million; WPM, which runs payment collection for UK universities, in December 2021 for about $59.6 million; Cohort Go, an education-agent payments business, in July 2022; StudyLink, an Australian admissions and application platform, in November 2023 for about $39 million; Invoiced, a B2B accounts-receivable SaaS product, in August 2024 for about $45 million net of cash acquired; and Sertifi, a hospitality software company used by hotels for contracts, card authorisations and payment capture, in February 2025 for an announced $330 million, funded with cash and debt that Flywire had repaid by the end of that year. The result is four verticals — education, healthcare, travel and B2B — that share one payments platform and one proprietary global network.

As of June 30, 2026 Flywire served about 5,300 clients, excluding those acquired with Sertifi and Invoiced: more than 3,300 educational institutions, more than 150 healthcare systems — four of the ten largest in the United States by hospital size, it says — and roughly 1,800 travel and B2B clients. For 2025 it reported revenue of $623.0 million, up from $492.1 million, total payment volume of $37.6 billion, and net income of $13.5 million; the second quarter of 2026 brought revenue of $167.7 million, up 27%, and payment volume of $8.2 billion, up 38%, with a quarterly net loss of $8.1 million and adjusted EBITDA of $24.0 million. The company raised its 2026 guidance in August 2026 to 21–27% growth in revenue less ancillary services on a currency-neutral basis.

What it costs

Nothing about Flywire's pricing is public, which is the single biggest difference between it and the processors this site normally reviews. Its filings describe how it earns money rather than how much: transaction revenue is a fee on each payment, generally a rate applied to the payment value that varies with the payment method, the currency pair being converted and the regions the client and payer are in, plus fixed per-transaction fees that mostly relate to domestic payments. On top of that sit platform revenues — software subscriptions and usage fees for the vertical products, fees for setting up payment plans, printing and mailing, insurance commissions, and interest on client funds — and marketing fees from card networks, which Flywire treats as ancillary and strips out of its headline growth metric.

Who pays is a matter of contract. Flywire's help centre tells payers that the total they see before confirming may include the institution's amount, Flywire fees if applicable, currency conversion costs, and processing fees charged by Flywire or its payment partners, and that the total excludes whatever their own bank or card issuer charges on top. The exchange rate is confirmed when the payment request is created and held until the due date on that request, and for eligible local-currency bank transfers a Best Price Guarantee lets a payer claim a better rate if their bank offers one within two hours. For the institution the questions to ask are the rate by corridor and method, whether payer fees are added or absorbed, what the domestic card and ACH pricing looks like where Flywire is handling those too, and what the software subscription costs for the vertical product.

Contract and payouts

Client agreements are negotiated and their terms are not published, so this review cannot quote a contract length, a termination fee or a settlement schedule the way it would for a merchant-account provider. Flywire held $235.5 million of funds payable to clients on its balance sheet at June 30, 2026, which is the money in transit at that moment between payers and institutions; as a licensed money transmitter it is subject to state rules on how client funds are held and invested, bonding, minimum capital and examination. Its subsidiary Flywire Global Corp. holds money-transmitter licences in 46 US jurisdictions and is applying in the rest, and the group is registered with FinCEN as a money services business. In its risk factors the company also notes that it relies on exemptions from licensing in some states as an agent of the payee — a normal position for a payment company, but one that regulators could question.

Reputation

Flywire's Trustpilot profile shows a 4.0 from about 3,150 reviews, with 68% five-star and 16% one-star, and the company replies to 99% of negative reviews, usually within a day. It ranks 44th of 54 in Trustpilot's payment-service category. The people writing are almost entirely payers — students paying tuition, patients paying bills, travellers paying deposits — and the split is what you would expect from a cross-border payment that usually works and occasionally does not: the five-star reviews praise a quick, clear process and helpful staff, the one-star reviews describe money stuck in processing, local partners who do not pick up, and refunds that take weeks. The Better Business Bureau rates Flywire A-, not accredited, and gives its reason as a failure to respond to one complaint; its file lists the business as started in September 2009 with about 1,200 employees.

Two disclosures in the company's own filings matter more than the review scores. First, on July 25, 2025 a securities class action, Hickman v. Flywire Corporation, was filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York on behalf of investors who bought shares between May 21, 2024 and February 25, 2025, alleging that Flywire overstated the strength and sustainability of its growth and understated the effect of visa and permit policies on its education business. The complaint was amended in January 2026 and again on May 7, 2026; Flywire filed a motion to dismiss on June 15, 2026, says it has strong defences, and has not booked a provision. Second, while strengthening its sanctions programme Flywire's own review identified payments that may have originated from sanctioned jurisdictions or persons; it has made voluntary submissions to the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control and is working with OFAC to resolve them, and says it does not expect any resulting loss to be material. Neither is a claim about the product, but both are the kind of thing a treasurer signing a multi-year agreement should have read.

The verdict

Flywire is the specialist in a job most acquirers do badly: getting a large bill paid from another country, in the payer's currency and by the payer's usual method, and landing it reconciled in the institution's account. It has the network, the licences, the scale and, since 2025, the profits to back that up, and the acquisitions have turned a payment rail into a set of vertical products. Against that, it publishes no prices, its payer experience draws a persistent one-star minority, its largest vertical rises and falls with immigration policy, and it is defending a shareholder suit and resolving a sanctions self-report at the same time. A B reflects a strong product for a narrow audience, bought on negotiated terms that the buyer must read carefully.