Flywire partners with Adapt IT to digitise international education payments in SA

Today, Flywire Corporation (Flywire) (Nasdaq: FLYW), a global payments enablement and software company, announced a partnership with Adapt IT Education, a division of Adapt IT Holdings, to streamline and digitise cross-border education payments for students studying in South Africa. 

As the exclusive international payments partner for Adapt IT, Flywire will improve the payment experience for students and their families and the institutions that use Adapt IT software. Direct integration with Adapt ITs ITS Integrator student management system improves operational efficiencies and eases the administrative burden associated with international tuition payments, all within the familiar interface.

As international students continue to pick South Africa, institutions demand modern payment experiences

South Africa has increasingly become an academic destination of choice for international students for its rich diversity, unique cultures and internationally renowned universities. It’s also an affordable study abroad destination and it appeals to students who want to experience the “Rainbow Nation”.

According to the study abroad consultancy StudyLink, more than 45 000 international students choose to study in South Africa each academic year across its 26 public universities and 50 TVET Colleges. Four of those universities have made the QS 2022 World University Rankings Top 500 List.

Like many institutions, Adapt IT's clients consider international students a critical cohort to recruit and retain. However, the traditional payment experience for international students and families was cumbersome and expensive, with limited payment options. Likewise, institutions had no way to track payments and administrators would need to devote time and resources to manual reconciliation.

When Adapt IT’s university clients demanded a seamless, technology-driven payment experience to help them compete for international students, Adapt IT turned to Flywire to bolster their existing student-facing software.

“We considered various payment partners, but Flywire was the standout for international payment enablement,” said Luxolo Rubushe, Adapt IT Education MD. “The combination of Flywire’s innovative global payment platform and powerful software easily integrates into our system, creating immense benefits for both students and our clients."

Flywire embeds into Adapt IT to unlock payment flexibility and efficiency

Headquartered in Johannesburg, Adapt IT provides leading specialised software and digitally led business solutions that assist clients across targeted industries to improve customer experience, business operations, business administration, enterprise resource planning and public service delivery.

With Flywire’s payment gateway embedded directly into Adapt IT's ITS Integrator student management system, all friction is removed from the entire payment experience. Students have a seamless, easy way to pay for their education in their local currency while enjoying low exchange rates, convenient online payment tracking and superior customer service. Additional benefits of the Flywire integration with Adapt ITs student management system for both universities and students and families include:

• Online payment tracking: Universities can automatically capture all relevant student information, ensuring the payments received are accurate and identifiable.
• Transparency and flexibility: Flywire shows how much the student owes in their local currency and helps students avoid large international transfer fees.
• Automated reconciliation: Flywire identifies the source of payments delivered to an institution’s bank account and automatically posts each payment to the correct student record.
• Around-the-clock support: Flywire offers students and families around-the-clock multilingual support and services across the globe via chat, phone and e-mail.

“We’re thrilled to partner with Adapt IT to help universities in South Africa delight their students with seamless, digital payment experiences,” said Sharon Butler, Executive Vice-President of Global Education, Flywire. “We’ve built our platform to enable partners like Adapt IT to easily serve their customers, and to increase payer satisfaction while reducing costs. This partnership brings two leading solutions together to better serve the South African education market, and we look forward to building our relationship.”

Flywire's education payments platform and global payment network enable higher education institutions to offer a highly tailored, convenient and secure digital payment experience, which can be customised by a school, country and currency. This flexible yet powerful payment solution is designed to accelerate funds flow, ease reconciliation and streamline operational expenses. The solution also enables institutions to create custom payment plans to provide students and families with greater flexibility.