Flywire was founded in 2011 to bring more transparency to global payments. The company has offices around the world and more than 2,000 organizations depend on it for secure payment processing. Here, Mr. Massaro discusses the company’s culture, evolution and where it’s headed in 2020.
Question: How has Flywire evolved as a company over the past eight years?
Mike Massaro: The company started in the education space, focused on addressing the complexities of cross-border tuition payments for schools and students. Since then, we’ve expanded both geographically — in both Europe and Asia-Pacific — as well as vertically, into healthcare, travel and other commercial segments. Our focus in specific verticals has proven to be a real strength with our clients. In 2018, we acquired OnPlan Health, an innovator in patient billing and payments with deep healthcare expertise in the U.S. market. The co-founders, John Talaga, who now leads our healthcare business, and David King, who is our CTO, have helped transform Flywire into a comprehensive solution provider for both domestic and cross-border healthcare payments — and we are quickly becoming the market leader in the modernization of healthcare payments.
Q: What about the company’s culture has allowed for rapid growth and innovation?
MM: We encourage a strong ownership mentality at the company. Our employees (we call them FlyMates) are very client focused and there is a high degree of accountability to one another. That drives high levels of client satisfaction and strong word-of-mouth in segments like healthcare. Our client focus also drives innovation because our people want to solve the clients’ problems. For example, the continued rise in patient out-of-pocket costs has created a significant affordability problem for patients, and a downstream collectability problem for providers. Our team worked with our healthcare clients to build a solution that segments accounts at patient access to identify their ability to pay, engage them with affordable payment plan offers, and allow them to self-activate plans to settle payment before their visit. This type of innovation gives the patients piece of mind and greatly improves collection rates for providers.
Q: Thinking strategically about 2020, what do you expect to stay the same, and what will change?
MM: We will continue to hone our vertical focus in healthcare. That’s something that won’t change. What will evolve is our use of analytics. The technology solutions and service providers that are going to thrive will be those that can leverage deep analytics to help hospitals really understand what receivables look like. With patient responsibility continuing to grow, providers will rely more heavily on technology that delivers high yield. As far as other changes, we expect regulations like surprise bills and pricing transparency to influence how providers approach patient engagement and we will play a role in supporting our clients there.
Q: What are you most excited about for the next 3-5 years?
MM: The opportunity in front of us — as a company focused on vertical payment and receivable solutions — is tremendous. In healthcare specifically, there is an increasing amount of attention being placed on the patient payment space, and Flywire has a bold product strategy mapped out through 2025 that positions us really well to meet our clients’ need as they continue to evolve.
More articles on health IT:
The biggest IT treat to health systems goes beyond cyberattacks
Optum expects 2020 revenue to jump 14%, hit up to $128B: 8 things to know
Henry Ford Health CXO David Duvall on creating memorable journeys for patients
