RBC Looks To Sell Australia’s Student Payments Platform Cohort Go

RBC Capital Markets will auction off global payments platform business Cohort Go, a report says.

Cohort Go, based in Brisbane, helps international students pay costs including tuition.

According to the report, RBC’s bankers have begun showing the business to possible domestic and offshore strategic suitors and private equity firms. It has been telling them it thinks it’ll be calling for binding bids in March and plans to get a signed deal after that.

A flyer sent to possible buyers pitched Cohort Go as a vertically-integrated payments platform for the international student sector.

Students, it said, have made use of the platform to securely pay tuition and study fees, insurance, accommodations and other costs that come with studying in another country.

Cohort Go was founded in 2012 by CEO Mark Fletcher and CTO Paul Jones.

The report says that the business had been servicing international students studying in Australia originally, but now has expanded to serve Canada, Europe and the U.K.

The company is still a small player in the scene for student payments, which are said to be worth around $660 billion a year.

In 2022, the company expects to process $880 million in payments and to record $21.4 million in revenue.

Suitors will reportedly be looking into how the business was doing in the last two years, when international student numbers were crunched in Australia. Cohort Go will likely tell them it missed the worst of all of that due to its choice to take its product to other markets in 2018.

In other news related to cross-border payments, PYMNTS wrote recently that Paysend, the card-to-card and international pay platform, has partnered with Tencent Holdings to allow people to receive money over the WeChat service.

Read more: Paysend, Tencent Collaborate on Cross-Border Payments

The partnership will let Paysend users make cross-border payments through Chinese licensed banks. The funds will go to bank accounts through the Weixin app, a version of WeChat.