The University of Portland had a big idea: tuition payment experiences should be frustration-free, for everyone. Students should be able to trust that the payment plan balance displayed in their portal is accurate. Designated family members should be able to get authorized account access to easily view and pay a bill at any time. And staff should be able to complete simple tasks like entering a student’s name without having to worry that inserting a hyphen or special character will freeze the system.
Complacency with roadblocks introduced by “basic transaction processing,” as Associate Vice President for Finance & Controller Ken Pifer put it, had to go. The quality of the tuition payment experience supports predictable enrollment and retention, and by extension, revenue. Nothing in it should introduce friction.
“We need to stop doing work that is not critical and that can be done by well-designed systems, so that we have more time to engage with students,” Pifer said. Every step, like manually entering payment plan information in two separate systems or printing out a bill to answer questions on the phone, takes up valuable time.
University of Portland
at a glance
Students: ~3,000 undergraduate, 2% international
SIS: Ellucian Banner
Flywire Solutions:
- SFS Billing & Payment Management (billing, international and domestic payments, payment plans, 1098-Ts)
- SFS Collection Management (automated past-due collections)
- 529 disbursements
How University of Portland built momentum for a payment platform change
University of Portland relied on three separate vendors to manage the student payment journey. It had one vendor for student payment and payment plan experiences. It relied on its Ellucian Banner SIS for billing (sending text alerts through Ellucian Campus Communicator and invoices by mail), and Flywire to securely collect and receive payments from international students.
As the finance team talked with other higher education institutions at industry conferences, they started to become more interested in Flywire’s Student Financial Software (SFS) and its capabilities beyond collecting international tuition payments. It quickly became clear how Flywire was “just at a different level in terms of user experience,” according to Pifer, not only from its current payment plan provider, but really anyone else when it came to flexible billing and payment plan functionality for an affordable price. What’s more, Flywire had unique functionality for collecting past-due tuition payments.
University of Portland particularly liked that Flywire:
- Eliminates workarounds, manual entry of payment plans in two systems. Flywire is integrated with Ellucian Banner so that balance information is up to date and accurate. Families can now self-serve online and no longer need to wait to check balance information during business hours. In addition, as a system built for global transactions, Flywire easily accommodates names with special characters and hyphens.
- Streamlines authorized user access. Flywire makes it easy to add anyone as an authorized user on a student account – with functionality that allows families and other users to “nudge” their student to be added as authorized users to gain account access. This provides an around-the-clock way for all users to digitally view and pay account balances at their convenience. There is also an option for secure “guest checkout” that allows for making a payment on behalf of a student without full authorized user access.
- Delivers more flexibility to communicate with students. With an ever-changing regulatory and legislative environment, communication is critical. With Flywire, it is easy for the university to automatically email and text students. Staff can share news or request that students update important documents directly with push banner displays on the portal —all without needing to involve IT.
- Ensures reliable updates and upgrades. The University of Portland can rest assured they have the high levels of payment security because of Flywire’s global reach, and leading practices for AML, security and compliance updates. Automation is key to not only the payers, but admins as well, so they can rest easy knowing that systems are always updated and operating efficiently.
Working with the Flywire team has been my best implementation experience to date – professional, smooth, well-run and led by people who know what they’re doing. So many organizations make a great sales pitch, but when you get to the implementation, you wonder if it is the same organization you thought you were partnering with.
Cross-departmental collaboration led to smooth implementation, go-live ahead of schedule
To build consensus for a system change, University of Portland’s finance team was careful to listen and bring along key stakeholders across campus—from enrollment management to marketing. Flywire’s deep higher education expertise helped to build confidence across these teams that the switch was not only necessary, but strategic. Through a clear, structured approach to requirements gathering and an efficient use of staff time, the project went-live ahead of schedule.
“Working with the Flywire team has been my best implementation experience to date – professional, smooth, well-run and led by people who know what they’re doing,” Pifer said. “So many organizations make a great sales pitch, but when you get to the implementation, you wonder if it is the same organization you thought you were partnering with.”
The team also appreciates that support has extended past go-live, with the Flywire partnership only strengthening.
“Compared to our previous provider, the support difference is night and day,” Tracie Gerber, University of Portland’s Director of Student Accounts, said. “Flywire’s responsiveness and professionalism have made our processes smoother and more reliable. Their team truly understands the importance of timely and effective support, and it shows in every interaction."
More time, targeted functionality to tackle tough problems, like enrollment melt and past-due tuition
Since its summer 2025 implementation, University of Portland has:
- Increased payment plan enrollment by 40% year-over-year to more than 675 active plans annually
- Reduced the time spent managing emails, phone calls and walk-in visits from students
- Saved hundreds on the costs of printing invoices typically needed to support inquiries and explain the old version of the bill
The team now has freedom to think about ways to solve bigger issues. For instance, smaller liberal arts institutions are increasingly combating a “double-deposit” environment in which students pay their deposit to enroll, but fail to show up after deciding to attend another institution instead. The institution’s ability to reduce this enrollment drop-off—also known as “melt”—presents a huge opportunity to capture hundreds of thousands in potentially lost revenue that clear, secure and seamless payment experiences can help recover.
“We know that to combat melt, we need to do a better job of engaging admitted students and ensuring that they understand their responsibilities, what needs to happen for them to be able to come to the University and to be successful,” Pifer said. “Flywire is a critical component of our melt tool kit, enabling us to spend more time on relationship building with students.”