A partnership between Citi Commercial Bank and payments fintech Flywire benefited Boston health care workers last month. When Harvard Business School student Sophie Bai found a supplier of personal protective equipment (PPE) in China, her professor connected her with The Boston Foundation, a nonprofit, and Flywire, which uses Citi’s payment rails to move money around the world. 

“One of the challenges that everybody is facing in the COVID-19 pandemic market is that supply chains have really been disrupted,” said Thor Perplies, treasury sales officer and senior vice president at Citi Commercial Bank. “There’s a higher stress on the manufacturers in China to produce PPE, and there’s a greater need from descending parties to send the funds as soon as possible so they can receive the money and use that funding to produce PPE for the sale.” 

According to Citi and Flywire, finding affordable, large-scale PPE is a major challenge, and increased demand means payment speed is a deciding factor in receiving it. Ryan Frere, executive vice president of global payments at Flywire, said many companies in China won’t even start processing orders until they have received the funds. With Flywire, Citi was able to move the funds to China on a Tuesday — after initially learning about the idea on a Saturday. 

Flywire sent the payment through Citi Direct, a digital platform that allows Citi’s clients to interact with the bank. Using Citi Payment Insights, a tool developed by Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions, Flywire tracked the payment and matched it to the PPE invoice for the supplier’s bank. Flywire’s tech, meanwhile, handles the onboarding and know-your-customer requirements for the biller and payer.  

“Once [funds] are in, they are secure. They are the clients’ funds at that point, and they can operate as if the [funds] are in their own account,” Frere said. “You’re really taking weeks or days off the movement of funds.” 

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Boston-based Flywire contacted Citi about the payment via a phone call on a Saturday afternoon after Bai found a supplier through a family friend. Citi contacted team members in China to make sure they were on alert for the payment. Flywire, meanwhile, had to make sure it could meet all foreign exchange requirements for sending the payment, as well as compliance requirements for onboarding The Boston Foundation and the PPE supplier.  

Flywire and Citi have moved more than $2 million for this particular initiative so far. The supplier has delivered 700,000 pieces of PPE to Boston hospitals like Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Beth Israel Lahey Health, Boston Medical Center and Hebrew Senior Life. According to Citi and Flywire, 700,000 more pieces have been secured for delivery in the near future.  

Flywire says it has processed more than $16 billion for more than 2,000 clients globally since its 2011 founding. The company operates in more than 220 countries, according to Frere. New York-based Citi, meanwhile, has $1.95 trillion in assets. According to Perplies, the bank processes an average of more than $4 trillion in payments daily. Citi has partnered with Flywire since 2011.  

“We’ve built this relationship with Flywire, and we’ve built it with some sophisticated and advanced solutions that helped make these payments and reconcile the info,” Perplies said. “It was proof that the solutions we put in place can achieve their goal.”