[Case Study] University of Newcastle selects Flywire as sole international payments provider

Since it was founded over 55 years ago in the lively port town of Newcastle, New South Wales, the University of Newcastle has expanded significantly to provide an exceptional education to more than 39,000 students across six campuses along the coastline of New South Wales and in Singapore.

The university offers students 200+ degree programmes and has a stellar reputation for its teaching and research in diverse subjects including health and medicine, science and engineering, energy and the environment, business, law, education and the arts. Its reputation and results mean that it is now recognised as one of the top 200 universities in the world.

Learn more about University of Newcastle

Challenge: Old-fashioned payment portals and manual processes

As the university expanded and its reputation grew , it attracted more international students, particularly from China, Singapore, India and other parts of Asia. The university had supported international tuition payments with another payment provider – but growth was straining the solution; its portal back-end was old-fashioned and “clunky” for the finance team users. It also couldn’t support the integrations or business services that the university, and its students, demanded like Flywire can. Because of this, the finance team spent large amounts of time manually reconciling payments and processing refunds, as well as answering student enquiries around payments - something they definitely wanted to see change.

Solution: Flywire chosen for superior payer and client experience

The University of Newcastle implemented Flywire for international cross-border tuition payments, initially opting to provide choice to students. As such, Flywire was available to payers alongside the university’s legacy payment provider. With a broader global footprint, Flywire enabled the university’s international students, who hail from 50 countries, to securely pay in over 240 currencies using convenient, local methods. In addition, with Flywire, students received real-time status updates and access to around-the-clock support in local languages for help navigating the payment process.

Flywire quickly proved to be the preferred solution, for both payers and staff, and University of Newcastle made the decision in October 2022 to phase out the legacy provider and use Flywire as their sole payment provider.

The self-service nature of the Flywire payment portal, as well as the integrated reconciliation processing and easy refund process, means that the back office administration of payments is now “a breeze” for the team. In addition, instead of spending time answering student queries, finance team members now have capacity to focus on strategically beneficial activities and projects, for example improving their payer communications and upgrading their finance software.