- High-growth vertical payments company Flywire announced it has acquired Simplee and raised $120 million in Series E funding
High-growth vertical payments company Flywire announced it has acquired leading healthcare technology platform Simplee and raised $120 million in Series E funding. Through the acquisition, Flywire will be able to optimize the digital payments and patient engagement experience in healthcare and scale its global payments services. And the acquisition builds on Flywire’s growing healthcare payments business and accelerates the company’s market share.
The $120 million Series E investment round was led by Goldman Sachs, which contributes to Flywire’s strong balance sheet and provides additional capital to support the company’s vision to digitize payments across its key verticals, including education, healthcare, and travel.
With its 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. But the payment experience across many industries such as healthcare is full of inefficiencies and poorly integrated point solutions, which causes substantial financial losses.
Along with the high healthcare costs is the secular trend towards high-deductible health plans, healthcare patients in the United States will be responsible for $365.5 billion in out-of-pocket healthcare spend per year (according to CMS). This represents 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 is accelerating the digitization of payments to address the challenges around patient engagement as well as healthcare finance and affordability. And 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. Plus the companies will power four of the top ten US healthcare systems and process over $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,” added Flywire CEO Mike Massaro. “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.”
$120 Million Series E Funding
Flywire also announced it raised $120 million in Series E funding led by Goldman Sachs — which will support Flywire’s ongoing investment in its multi-vertical strategy. And this round of funding brings the company’s total funding 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,” noted Ashwin Gupta, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs. “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.”
So far, Flywire processed over $12 billion in total payment volume for over 2,000 clients around the world.
