Global payments specialist Flywire has acquired Cohort Go as it seeks to accelerate growth in agent partnerships and further invest in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Boston-based software company also hopes that Cohort Go’s existing payment infrastructure will help Flywire bolster its global payment system.
“Recruiting agencies play a critical role in the international student journey by assisting students in finding placements in higher educational and other institutions,” said Mike Massaro, CEO of Flywire.
“Cohort Go has been prominent in this space, with a network of over 1,000 agent partnerships, including some of the most prestigious student recruitment agencies in the world.”
Along with APAC, which is a key geographic focus for Flywire, the software company expects to benefit from Cohort Go’s footprint in Latin America.
Flywire noted that education agents are expected to play a “critical role” in international recruitment, pointing to a 2021 report from the American International Recruitment Council and the National Association for College Admission Counseling that found that 49% of responding US colleges partnered with education agents – up from 36% in 2017-2018.
“Cohort Go’s successful agent platform, global footprint and adjacent services complement our existing capabilities”
“As we continue to invest in our Flywire Advantage – the combination of our next-gen payments platform, proprietary global payment network and industry-specific software – we seek opportunities to embed deeper into the workflows of our clients, agents and payers, with the goal of driving more value for them,” Massaro continued.
“Cohort Go’s successful agent platform, global footprint and adjacent services complement our existing capabilities and will help us power the higher education ecosystem into the future.”
In 2021, Flywire expanded into the UK market by acquiring education payments firm WPM.
The Cohort Go deal will help to accelerate Flywire’s roadmap to enable a broader suite of financial services targeted to international students, the company added.
“Working with our clients on delivering high-stakes, high-value tuition payments, we’ve continued to discover pain points in the education ecosystem that we believe we’re uniquely positioned to solve,” Massaro added.
“Cohort Go gives us an opportunity to accelerate the investment we have been making to further extend our value proposition to international students. With our Flywire Advantage, we can apply our existing framework of using software to drive value in payments to solve very specific use cases.”