peerTransfer, founded out of MIT, makes it up to five times cheaper to send international college tuition payments. We profiled the company this past fall as one of six startups putting Boston on the map for payments. Since then, their team has grown to 16 people in number and opened a second office in Valencia, Spain. More important: the company found an expanded niche for their offering — one that drives value not only students and parents, but to colleges and universities, as well.
“We started out really wanting to help students. And what we found is that we could also really help the schools,” shared founder and CEO Iker Marcaide in an interview.
The company began their shift to focus on this solution for colleges and universities in October, today formally announcing their free, streamlined international student payment solution called peerTransfer Education.
“Schools have issues reconciling these tuition payments. It is a really time consuming process,” Marcaide explained and continued on to detail with me. “What we do is send a file to the school with who paid and how much, including things like the student ID number, so they don’t have to go through a more tedious process of reconciling bank accounts.”
Partnering with colleges (for free) will make it much easier for peerTransfer to expand, as the college can promote the service to their own student body directly.
Curious how the peerTransfer platform works? Students send money through peerTransfer by entering their personal information and the currency at hand. peerTransfer then bundles payments in the same currencies together to score a better exchange rate at wholesale. This ends of saving 3-5% of the amount transferred; on a $40,000 tuition payment that can amount to around $1500.
According to Marcaide, peerTransfer’s goal is to offer the product to college partners in the Northeast this year and spread swiftly to college campuses across the nation. They have already partnered with several schools including Reed College, Suffolk University, and Wellesley College. And these schools are no short of loving the product, with Wellesley College weighing in on their experience in the press release issued today:
“International students represent a growing population at Wellesley,” said Jim Garrant, manager of student accounts and educational financing at Wellesley College, an adopter of the peerTransfer service. “It is our fundamental goal at the college to ensure that our entire international student base feels welcomed and ‘at home’ in all their dealings with Wellesley – from the first acceptance letter through graduation. By partnering with peerTransfer, we ensure the payment experience for our international students is as pleasant as possible – with cost savings and the peace of mind of knowing that their payment was received. In addition to our students’ benefits, we are able to improve our own efficiencies at the same time – it’s a win-win.”
The company will be presenting at Finovate in just a few days, a launchpad event for innovative financial services products and startups. They will unveil the service there on-stage next week in San Francisco.
