Flywire Seeing Strong Growth In Japan’s Education Market

Flywire, a provider of international payments and receivables solutions for businesses, schools and healthcare providers announced news on Tuesday (August 8) that it is seeing strong growth in the Japanese education market.

In a press release, Flywire said that since launching its payments processing service in Japan in April 2016, the company has achieved important milestones across multiple metrics, including the number of schools deploying the service and the amount of money moved. Among the milestones are the signing of more than 90 schools in Japan to use its global payment processing platform and moving about $60 million on behalf of Japanese schools and students.

What’s more, the company said the number of international students that are studying in Japan increased close to 10 percent in 2015 and 15 percent last year. In 2016, Flywire said there were 239,287 international students enrolled in Japanese schools, with higher education institutions accounting for 171,122 of those international students, up 12.5 percent. Japanese language institutes accounted for 68,165, up 21 percent, the company noted.

Recruiting international students is an important initiative in Japan, with government agencies such as the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) working with the country’s education institutions to appeal to more international students, Flywire said in the press release.

According to the company, Flywire serves both schools recruiting international students, as well as students traveling outside their home countries to study around the world. Founded in 2011, the company has processed over $5 billion payments in the education market and established its platform for international payments and receivables solutions.

“International education is thriving in Japan, and it’s one of the key countries in our expansion in the Asia-Pacific region,” said Mike Massaro, CEO at Flywire, in the press release. “We have an outstanding team in place focused on serving the needs of both educational institutions and students to make the cross-border payment and receivable process easy, efficient and transparent for all involved.”