Flywire: How Tech Powers Frictionless Cross-Border Payments

Cross-border payments are one of the most complex challenges in financial services. For organisations handling international transactions – whether universities collecting tuition, healthcare providers managing patient payment or travel companies streamlining guest payments  – friction points are in abundance.

Flywire has built its business by removing these friction points for mission-critical payments. As a global payments enablement and software company, the firm processes payments in at least 140 currencies and more than 240 countries. Thérèse Giambona, Vice President of Operations and Payables, leads the operational infrastructure supporting these transactions.

Flywire specialises in complex payment flows across education, healthcare, travel and business-to-business sectors. Unlike traditional payment processors, the firm combines a next-gen payments platform, proprietary global payments network with vertical-specific software solutions, which enable Flywire to embed deeply into the existing workflows of its clients.

The company’s education vertical remains a growth engine, having originally solved the challenge of international students paying tuition fees. A decade ago, transferring tuition from the US to a UK university, for example, posed significant difficulties around timing, reference information and proper routing.

“If you don't do that correctly, visas are held up and lives can be turned upside down,” Thérèse explains. “When Flywire came on the scene, it was very innovative.”

Since its founding, Flywire has expanded well beyond education. The company now also serves the Travel, B2B, and Healthcare industries, and is focused on delivering on large-value, high-complexity domestic and international payments and leveraging software to deeply embed in clients' core systems of record.   Delivering large-value, high-complexity transactions in some of the most regulated industries brings both practical and philosophical challenges for operations teams.

“As we’ve scaled and matured, there has been a meaningful shift around how we invest our resources.”

The company must balance maintaining entrepreneurial agility with implementing the structure and discipline required for sustained growth at scale. This evolution directly impacts how Flywire approaches product development and client relationships.

Designing solutions, not processing payments

As an operations leader, Thérèse emphasises that Flywire's approach differs fundamentally from what she calls “payments factories” – providers focused purely on volume. Instead, the company invests significant time understanding the specific friction points clients face.

“Flywire sits down and asks the bigger question: what problem are you trying to solve?,” she says. “Yes, there’s a payment to be made, but what’s the friction before, during and after?”

This philosophy manifested clearly in Flywire’s development of its US loan disbursement solution for UK universities. American students frequently rely on federal or private loans to fund their education. When those students study abroad – particularly in the UK – the payment process becomes extraordinarily complex for students and institutions.

Last year, Thérèse assembled a team comprising engineers, product designers, subject matter experts and payables specialists, spending a week travelling across the UK and meeting with university clients to understand the complexity first hand. 

“This team went across the UK, sat with people and came to understand that this process was a beast,” she remembers. “There was nothing good about it. There was friction all over the place.`”

What followed exemplifies Flywire’s collaborative development approach. Rather than disappearing for months to build a solution, the team worked iteratively with university partners. Clients received regular demonstrations of work in progress, providing feedback that shaped the final product.

“‘We thought you said this, but you actually meant this’ – we encountered none of that, because when you do it incrementally, you catch yourself,” she explains. The team launched the solution in time for September’s academic peak.

Leveraging technology for transparency

Behind Flywire’s client-facing solutions lies significant technological infrastructure. Thérèse highlights key innovations improving transparency and efficiency in cross-border payments including account validation and payment insights tools.

Thérèse explains that account validation technology has evolved considerably in recent years. Previously, companies would send payments according to value dates that varied by currency, corridor and clearing channel. Recipients might wait days to confirm receipt, with little visibility into payment status.

“Modern account validation tools verify that destination accounts are active and belong to the intended recipient before funds move,” she says. “This eliminates rework from returned payments and reduces friction significantly. The technology is particularly advanced in the UK, US and SEPA regions. Flywire seamlessly integrates these tools into our existing network capabilities to greatly enhance service delivery to payers and clients.”

There are several payment insight tools that have enhanced Flywire's network performance. Anything that can provide real-time payment tracking and faster settlement confirmation are value add. Thérèse says that sometimes global adoption can be limited, but that does not dampen the larger opportunity to transform insights into actionable benefits for Flywire's clients and payers. 

“I remember when these insights tools were entering the market,” she recalls. “It was a real gamble because industry adoption could have been a material hurdle.”  

However, the payments industry evolved rapidly and these services have become increasingly valuable.  

She adds: “We – from an operations perspective – understand the nuanced steps to marry our proprietary tools with industry tools to deliver best in class service for our internal and external stakeholders ." 

Data as operational bedrock

Underlying all technological advancement – at Flywire and across the fintech sector more broadly – is data infrastructure. 

From where Thérèse sits, data is “everything” for modern payment companies. This is because clean, well-organised data enables operations teams to supercharge automation and optimisation. Because of this, Flywire has hired data experts and data scientists to advance capabilities in this area.

“When I think about where I put my energy and where I put my attention, data is number one on the list,” Thérèse states, with AI and ML only able to function effectively with high-quality underlying data.

The industry-wide recognition of AI and ML’s roles – and what it needs to support these functions – represents the moment to invest in data infrastructure that reflects broader trends in financial technology. With payment volumes increasing and complexity increasing, manual processing is unsustainable. But the automation to streamline this process requires trustworthy, structured data.

But it’s not just automation that data underpins. Data also enables better visibility for clients – something that payment operations have historically lacked, with funds disappearing into a black box between sender and recipient. Modern platforms must surface information about payment status, fees, timing and exceptions. By enabling transparency, both operational efficiency and regulatory compliance come about, encouraging finserv regulators globally to have increased scrutiny of payment providers, demanding clear documentation of fund flows and customer protection measures.

Embracing regulatory complexity

At Flywire, the operations team recognises regulation’s fundamental purpose in protecting financial system integrity. 

For Thérèse, financial system security enables people to send money wherever they want, whenever they want, through multiple channels. Just 20 years ago, though, these capabilities were far more limited.

“It is so important that we maintain integrity in the financial system so that we can all continue with this wonderful liberty that we have,” she says, as regulation protects the soundness and security upon which modern commerce depends. “It also means that we as business people have to be thoughtful in how we interpret and anticipate the regulations that come our way. This is all driving towards the same thing – more safety and security – as well as understanding who you are working with and where the money is going.”

Flywire employs compliance and regulatory experts with extensive industry experience. These specialists meet with regulators, understand evolving requirements and translate complex regulatory language into practical operational guidance.

“They walk away and then they're able to make it real for the rest of us," Thérèse explains. “I think the fun part is that we have to take these things into account when we're building our solutions. You can’t ignore all of this. You also have to be a little bit creative because you don’t want these very important requirements to detract from the customer experience.

“There are tons of conversations we have around how to meet requirements – how not to burden the client with friction unless you really need to. And, if you really need to, how do we do it in such a way that it doesn’t erode the client experience? That level of creativity is some of the more interesting things that we get to do in the payments industry.”

The role of strategic partnerships

No payments company operates in isolation. Flywire’s global reach depends on partnerships with financial institutions that provide payment rails, currency services and back-office infrastructure. 

Citibank, according to Thérèse, has been a critical partnership for Flywire, supporting both receivables operations and outgoing payment solutions. 

The relationship extends back to Flywire’s earliest days, with Citibank involved from day zero as the company obtained licences and established its payment structure.

“I see them as an extension of the value that we drive for our clients,” Thérèse says. 

The partnership benefits from established trust and understanding. “Trust is there and that’s important,” she adds. “When you do need to phone because there’s something going on, they trust that you’re coming in good faith and they trust that you’re coming prepared, that if there is a challenge or an issue you are going to equip them with all of the tools necessary to resolve it, or you're going to give them a lead. It’s trust and that goes a long way in this business.”

Through their partnership, Flywire leverages Citibank's payment, foreign exchange, market specific tools and global account structures. The collaboration proved particularly valuable during the US loan disbursement solution launch, with Citibank helping Flywire navigate complex requirements.

But for Flywire, strategic partnerships extend beyond banking relationships. When it comes to product development, Flywire identifies client organisations to serve as co-developers and early adopters. These beta partners provide essential input throughout the design process.

Thérèse says: “The transparency and feedback in both directions has paid dividends in managing client expectations, launching products successfully and expediting issue resolution.”

Reframing challenges as opportunities

Flywire’s operational philosophy centres on reframing difficulties as opportunities rather than problems. 

Thérèse says that, in payment operations, something goes wrong every day. Rather than viewing each issue as a crisis, the focus is shifted to ensure a swift resolution.

“I never think of anything as a challenge,” she says. “No matter what happens, there's an opportunity there. There's an opportunity to exceed client expectations, deliver extra value, learn something. As we know something will go wrong every day, you can’t see everything as a challenge.

“Some of the really important lessons I’ve learned along the way involve doing whatever you can to keep your problems small. Don’t let things snowball – take it one thing at a time, understand the root cause and execute with the bigger goal in mind.”

Flywire’s transition from startup to mature public company demands this balanced perspective – and also sets it apart from others in the fintech space, thanks to its ability to maintain the entrepreneurial spirit and client focus that built its reputation while implementing structure and discipline required for sustained growth.

This approach underpins Therese’s operational priorities for 2026, which revolve around team development, data infrastructure and continued solution innovation. Investing in talent remains paramount, ensuring the operations team has appropriate training and skillsets for evolving requirements.

Moreover, back-office modernisation projects will focus on clear requirements, strong product and engineering partnerships and careful execution. And on the outgoing payments side, the team will continue identifying unique use cases where Flywire can deliver differentiated value, reflecting the company's core philosophy: technology and operations must never lose sight of the human needs driving payment flows.

Thérèse concludes: “I think 2026 is going to be about the team, data, optimising and scaling our operations, alongside continuing to deliver value for clients in those unique and special ways.”