Flywire Raises $120 Million in Series E Round Led by Goldman Sachs

  • Payments
  • 14.02.2020 09:28 am

Flywire, a high-growth vertical payments company, today announced that it has acquired Simplee, a leading healthcare technology platform, to optimise the digital payments and patient engagement experience in healthcare, and scale its global payments services. The acquisition builds on Flywire’s growing healthcare payments business and accelerates the company’s market share. Flywire is also announcing a $120 million Series E investment round, led by Goldman Sachs, which contributes to Flywire’s strong balance sheet and provides additional capital to support the company’s vision to digitise payments across its key verticals, including education, healthcare and travel.

Bolstered by new digital capabilities, global payments revenue is expected to grow at a 5.9% CAGR from 2019-2028 to become a $2.5 trillion industry by 2028, according to Boston Consulting Group. However, the payments experience across many verticals is fraught with inefficiencies and poorly integrated point solutions, which adversely impact patient engagement and accelerate financial losses. Exacerbating high healthcare costs is the secular trend towards high-deductible health plans; according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), healthcare patients in the United States will be responsible for $365.5 billion in out-of-pocket healthcare spend per year, representing a market opportunity for Flywire that is about 70% of the size of the entire U.S. e-commerce spend.

Flywire’s acquisition of Simplee accelerates the digitisation of payments to address the challenges around patient engagement as well as healthcare finance and affordability. Combining Flywire’s high-tech platform for providers with Simplee’s consumer-first paths to payment, both patients and providers are empowered to settle payment faster and on their own terms. Together, the companies will power four of the top ten US healthcare systems and process more than $10 billion in patient payments per year.

“Flywire is uniquely built on a global payments network, which is the cornerstone of how we move billions of dollars across 200+ countries and 150 currencies, and an industry-leading payments platform,” said Mike Massaro, CEO of Flywire. “This digital foundation enables us to develop vertical-specific applications that make payments more efficient and cost-effective for our global clients. The Simplee acquisition improves patient engagement and healthcare affordability and extends these capabilities to a broader customer base.”

Flywire is also announcing a $120 million Series E investment round led by Goldman Sachs, which will support Flywire’s ongoing investment in its multi-vertical strategy. This latest round brings the company’s total capital investment to $260 million. Tiger Management and Adage Capital Management also joined the round as new investors with participation from existing investors.

“We are thrilled to lead the Series E round for Flywire”, said Ashwin Gupta, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs’ Merchant Banking Division. “They bring together a unique blend of a payments network, platform and vertical-specific solutions to completely digitize the payments experience for their clients across industries. We look forward to continuing to help accelerate Flywire’s growth.”

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