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Flywire, which provides cross-border payments tech for travel companies, said Tuesday that it has acquired Sertifi for $330 million in a bid to expand services for hotels.
Flywire’s platform is meant to help travel companies simplify and streamline payments from consumers. Most clients are tour operators, destination management companies, and hotels. The company has about 4,500 clients globally across all the industries it serves, including education and health care.
The platform by Chicago-based Sertifi is meant to help hotels streamline events contracting, group bookings, and their associated payments. The company has 20,000 hotel clients, including brands under Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt, as well as luxury independent hotels like Sage Hospitality Group and the Corinthia Hotel in London. Sertifi was founded in 2008.
Flywire, based in Boston, says the acquisition adds a new category to its set of services and expands its travel footprint into new sectors, including large-scale branded hotels, luxury hotels, and boutique properties. Flywire plans to expand the Sertifi business internationally.
“We believe we have the opportunity to monetize the several billion dollars of payment volume that the Sertifi platform has enabled annually,” said Flywire CEO Michael Massaro during a call with investors Tuesday evening. “Together with Sertifi, Flywire can become a market leader with a strong presence across many of the world’s leading hotel brands, a great position in the United States, and an opportunity to build on their early international success with our global go-to-market teams and capabilities.”
Financials and Growth Expectations
The $330 million purchase price is being funded by a combination of cash and debt, Flywire said.
The company is borrowing $125 million for the purchase, with plans to repay $65 million shortly and the remainder before the end of the year, Flywire CFO Cosmin Pitigoi said during the investor call.
Flywire expects that the Sertifi business will grow faster than Flywire’s company average, same as its own travel business. The company’s travel vertical grew into its second largest in terms of revenue less ancillary services, with most of the growth around tour operators and management companies in the EMEA and APAC regions.
Flywire expects Sertifi to add between $35 million and $40 million to revenue in 2025 and have a positive adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization).
Flywire generated $492.1 million in revenue in 2024, up 22%, according to its earnings report released on Tuesday. The company completed $29.7 billion in transactions in 2024, up 23.6%.
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