PeerTransfer, a premier provider of global payment solutions for international education payments, today announced that it has closed a $7.5 million Series A financing round, led by Spark Capital with participation from AccelPartners, Maveron and Boston Seed Capital.
The funding will be used to increase headcount and infrastructure across functional areas to support growth as it expands the number of colleges and universities it works with. peerTransfer already works with over 30 leading institutions including Auburn University, Georgia State University, Miami University, Reed College, Suffolk University, University of Cincinnati, Wellesley College and Western Kentucky University to streamline their international payment processing while helping their international students save time and money.
peerTransfer is offered completely free of charge to colleges and universities, requires no IT implementation, and supports students across all countries. Currently available through leading colleges and universities, peerTransfer's solution provides significant time and cost savings for international students on tuition and other education-related payments. By collecting funds in the students' home currency, bundling transactions to secure higher-volume purchases and more favorable foreign exchange rates, and eliminating unnecessary intermediary transaction fees, peerTransfer provides significant cost savings as compared to traditional banking solutions - up to thousands of dollars for a single year's tuition. In addition to the student savings, peerTransfer helps schools reduce administrative overhead by ensuring the fast and accurate delivery and posting of funds.
"peerTransfer has rapidly emerged as the leading company in the international payment processing industry, gaining impressive traction with clients in the higher education space," said Alex Finkelstein, general partner at Spark Capital. "Its business model is rather innovative: no fees are charged to the school or to the student. Instead, the company shares a small part of the savings generated by students thanks to more favorable currency exchange rates. peerTransfer has beaten all of its milestones since we invested in the company less than a year aago and we look forward to further working with Iker and his team to support its next phase of growth."
"I founded this company to help international students save on fees and administrative hassle when making tuition payments. International students in the US lose more than $1 billion per year from bad currency exchange rates and banking fees. We want to help them." said founder and CEO, Iker Marcaide "We are already processing millions of dollars for our partner schools and providing substantial savings to their international students. As we enter our next phase of growth, I am excited to welcome Accel and Maveron and to continue working with the teams at Spark and Boston Seed Capital."