- Move comes as number of Chinese consumers seeking education and medical care in the US continues to grow
- New deal will help make paying for big-ticket services faster, cheaper and more convenient
- Announcement comes as UnionPay faces increasing pressure from competitors and changes in digital payments landscape
Global payments provider Flywire has announced an expanded partnership with UnionPay, China's only domestic credit card processor, in an effort to help international students and medical patients make faster, easier cross-border payments.
The latest data indicates that the number of Chinese consumers seeking education or medical treatment in the United States is significant – and growing. In 2016 alone, more than 800,000 Chinese students came to the US to study and roughly 500,000 Chinese nationals traveled to the US last year for medical care. Both of those figures are expected to rise.
It is essential for these consumers to transfer large amounts of money internationally, and they want the process to be fast, easy and cost-effective.
Under the new deal with Flywire, UnionPay customers can now use their credit cards to initiate international money transfers to the United States. Students, patients and family members who use the UnionPay card to make payments will also benefit from Flywire's competitive foreign exchange pricing.
Officials believe customers who must move large sums of money will appreciate the ease and convenience of using a familiar payments platform to make international transfers.
According to Ryan Frere, Flywire's Vice President of Global Payments, the expanded partnership is already delivering promising results.
"The tests went really well," Frere said. "We saw increased usage and increased satisfaction from a payer perspective."
Flywire is promoting the launch by offering UnionPay customers a promotional foreign exchange rate from now through the end of the year.
