Flywire Could Go Public With $3 Billion Valuation This Year

Payment processor Flywire Corp. has tapped investment banks to gear up for an initial public offering (IPO) in 2021 that could provide the firm with an approximately $3 billion valuation, Reuters reported, citing unnamed sources.

Flywire is working with J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. on the public offering, which could happen as soon as summer 2021. The company had a valuation of $1 billion in a funding round in February of last year, Reuters noted, citing PitchBook.

Flywire, which was started in 2011, has processed in excess of $16 billion in transactions and has over 550 individuals working in locations throughout the U.S., Asia and Europe. It is focused on facilitating payments in the travel, healthcare and education industries.

In a conversation with PYMNTS, Flywire CEO Mike Massaro covered the particular challenges of cash flow management and forecasting for the higher education system amid the pandemic. And firms in other verticals, such as travel and healthcare, have had to embrace payments flexibility to meet their clients’ needs.

“COVID-19 is causing issues both for the cost structure of running an educational system, and for the families who are looking to send their kids off to study,” Massaro said, noting that educational institutions have to prepare for a range of scenarios based on potential enrollment declines or an increase in students not able to make tuition payments.

Colin Smyth, head of travel at Flywire, said in a previous PYMNTS interview that many travel operators have used the downtime during the pandemic to “rip out their legacy systems” and revamp their digital offerings.

“We think people will pay for health, safety and the flexibility to easily modify and customize their travel,” he said. “And I think meeting those needs and how this is digitized could be one of the most interesting pieces of this.”

In the healthcare arena, the demand for digital offerings and payments has made digitization a requirement for health systems. Creating a virtual front door for patients to access their healthcare plans is receiving more attention as a way to simplify the overall consumer experience.

“[The pandemic is] bringing attention to a problem the hospitals had anyway: unplanned medical bills that patients, even in normal times, had difficulty affording. But with all the pressures created by the pandemic, it has really put a spotlight on the fact that we need to focus on helping patients pay over time,” Flywire Executive Vice President and General Manager of Healthcare John Talaga told PYMNTS.