Using Flywire for International Payment Processing
  • 26 Aug 2024
  • 4 minute read
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Using Flywire for International Payment Processing

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Article summary

Flywire is a payment processor that allows collecting payments from international applicants in their local currency. They offer a variety of payment options for different countries and are able to convert between currencies at reasonable rates.

In Slate, you can link a payment account (such as Application Fee or Enrollment Deposit) to the Flywire payment gateway. For some institutions, that is all that is needed—for example, if all applicants to a particular program will be international. In many cases, institutions prefer to route some international payments through Flywire while continuing to use another payment processor for payments within the US.

Create a New Payment Account

Since each payment gateway is linked to a particular payment account, the usual procedure is to create a new payment account that is intended just for international payments. A new payment account is simply a prompt with the key payment_account. For example, in addition to an existing Enrollment Deposit payment account, a new one could be created called Enrollment Deposit (International):

  • Status - Active

  • Key - payment_account

  • Value - Enrollment Deposit (International) 

A note about currency: By default, payments will be charged using US dollars (USD), but a particular payment account can be set to use a different currency. To do this, add the following code in the XML section of the prompt configuration:

<p>
  <k>currency</k>
  <v>CHF</v>
</p>

Use the three-letter code for the desired currency (in this example, "CHF" indicates that the currency is Swiss Francs). A full set of codes is part of the ISO 4217 specification. Note that currencies other than USD (U.S. dollars) are only supported for Flywire and for Slate Payments, at this time.

Link the Payment Gateway

Next, link this new payment account to the Flywire payment gateway. To do this, use the Application Editor.

  1. Click Database in the top navigation bar and select Application Editor

  2. Select the desired application configuration (For example, /apply/).

To accept Flywire payments for more than one application configuration:

  1. Select the payment page for the new payment account:

  2. Select Payment Providers:

  3. In the Payment Provider dropdown, select Flywire

If your institution has not yet contacted Flywire, please do so before adding a support ticket, so that Flywire staff can set up an account or help initiate the Slate integration.

Once you have your Flywire information:

  • Flywire Provider ID: This is provided by Flywire

  • Flywire Destination ID: This is provided by Flywire

  • Mark as Paid Once Payment is: When payments are made through Flywire, Slate will receive updates as the payment moves through the process. An institution can choose to mark the payment as complete on the person record as soon as the funds are in a guaranteed state, or can wait until the funds are delivered. Most institutions use guaranteed.

  • Current status: When initially setting up the Flywire gateway, use the Test status. Once the process has been tested, this should be changed to Production.

Add Payment Due Activities

Rules can be used to charge certain applicants using the new payment account.

For example, to charge an Enrollment Deposit, the typical approach is to add a form submission rule to an enrollment reply form that creates a Payment Due activity in the Enrollment Deposit payment account for applicants who answered that they will enroll.

To send some applicants to Flywire, first determine which applicants will pay from an international location. Add a question to the enrollment reply form asking whether the payment will be made from a US or international bank. Now, create two rules in an exclusivity group, one that creates a Payment Due activity using the Enrollment Deposit payment account (if the applicant will enroll and will pay from the US) and another rule that creates a Payment Due activity using the Enrollment Deposit (International) payment account (if the applicant will enroll and will pay internationally).

Similarly, for an Application Fee, you'd ask a question on your application to determine which type of payment is expected, and then create rules to add payment due activities in the appropriate account.

Testing

Rules can be used to charge certain applicants using the new payment account.

To test:

  1. Manually add a Payment Due activity to the application record of a test applicant, and visit the applicant status page for that record.

  2. Click the "Submit Payment" link to reach the payment gateway page. Clicking Submit on that page will redirect to the Flywire site.

  3. When the Flywire status is set to test, the Flywire Demo site will be used; Flywire can supply a username and password. Fill out payment information. The Flywire Demo site will offer the option of selecting a payment status, to allow simulating the steps of payment processing. (In production, the transaction will move through the status options automatically, as the payment is processed.)

  4. Select the payment status (guaranteed or delivered) that was configured to mark the payment as paid, and a Payment Received activity will be added to the Slate record.

In addition to testing the payment gateway, we recommend testing the full process, of course. For example, test the enrollment deposit process by following the "Test the Applicant Experience" section of the Decision Release documentation.


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