Seriously, have you ever seen a rebrand negatively affect a product? Rebrands have to be thought about retrospectively: you need to think whether it would make sense to go from the new to the old. Number26 for example rebranded to N26 and in retrospect it was an utterly obvious move.
Wise to Transferwise would make no sense especially if they are positioning themselves as more than a PayPal alternative. So this is a good rebrand.
And the generic name isn't a problem, any more than it was for Square. It's a shame $WISE is taken though.
I think there is an example in Europe. myTaxi has been rebranded to FREE NOW. The change has been dictated to free the brand from just the taxi business connection. But I believe it was unfortunate, at least for their taxi business. I don't have hard numbers, but the new name and logo seems to be random, completely unrelated to taxis, so when you see a car with it, you have no idea that the driver is a taxi driver. It's 2 years now with new name, but they iOS app is still named: FREE NOW (mytaxi). Me and my friends always have to ask someone "how mytaxi is called now?" because the app is no longer under M in the phone.
Worse for the company is that, since myTaxi was extremely catchy, there came a competitor called iTaxi, and many believe it might had take over some of the clients just because people trying to find myTaxi installed iTaxi instead, as FREE NOW looked cryptic and unrelated to taxis for them.
Wise is obviously a rebrand intended for IPO, along with their talks of being IPO ready. But Stripe? They dont seems to be making IPO preparation at all. I wonder when will it happen or they are happy now as they dont have to deal with the pressure of being a public company.
The pandemic coming along masked it, but I think the Realtimeboard to Miro rebrand did. They went from a clearly defined value proposition in the name to a nothing-word. For software that was installed on desktops, so the name and icon changed.
n=1 but I still have to stop and think which app I want to open for a realtime whiteboard.
Buy.com switching to Rakuten.com comes to mind.
Edit: A quick googling confirms they've indeed started talking about an IPO recently.
I think it’ll make searching a lot harder especially for an international service.
Wise? Waze? Whys? Ways?
But... it seems to have worked for “véz” so maybe this is just the “go big or go home” startup thing.
I have no idea if I’ll remember the name change a year from now, and as anything related to international money transfer is already sketchy, a rebrand is likely to make me wary.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26220276
also the logo, just so bad. I wonder who is behind such an ugly design, seems amateur to the extreme.
Anecdotal but I was somewhat reluctant to consider them as a "bank" due to their name (seemed like a service geared towards money transfer). The rebrand is not done for the existing customers, but for more easily capturing new ones.
Anyway, hope they stick around and eventually turn into a financial OS instead of folks needing a bank, plugging into underlying deposit accounts in the countries you need.
It wasn’t. So I guess there must be multiple apps called “Simple?”
Wise might be generic but encapsulates financial services well and fits in with all the other similar brands like Stripe, Square, Simple, Chase, etc.
Random aside - I'm carrying a transferwise card as my main payment card at the moment and just looking it doesn't say "Transferwise" on it, apart from in small print. It says "Hello World" on the front. I'd not actually noticed that till now in spite of having used it at least 100 times.
As you say yourself, the old name _waa_ "descriptive" but they have not been a simple transfer service for many years.
On the other hand, Amazon worked around it.
MLM House of Cards sequel where only diamond level and above members can unlock the final episode?
A shiny new top executive just trying to mark their territory in the best way known to humans and canines.
IMHO, not a good sign for where the company is headed.
"Wise" is very generic, and worse my guess is that they'll have a hell of a time defending that trademark.
The only way this makes sense is if they're intending to sunset the transfers in a couple of years, and are all in on their "we're not calling it a bank account, so who knows if we're actually regulated like a bank" product.
FWIW, I totally understand the bigger picture goals they describe in this post and I wish them every success.
Are there tax implications in the US for doing this type of transfer monthly?
Businesses opening accounts with TW get real bank account details, that work in the traditional banking system, for each currency with little hassle, and good exchange rates to boot.
Also, top Google search is this: https://www.wise.us/
Unbelievably bad rebrand, shockingly so
Naming collisions is such an ugly state of affairs
The name collision isn't great, but then again Transferwise was already somewhat of a collision with the other Wise anyway.
I get why they'd want a rebrand to "wise", similar to "Apple Computer" -> "Apple" when Apple started doing than just computers but IMO it's a bit early as they're still only known for their core Transferring funds services. At the same time having a short company name & domain like `wise.com` does give the impression of a more global trusted brand for anyone who's never heard of them - so I'd say it's a good move for them overall.
I ran into KYC, which is only fair. They required proof of funds which included a letter from my accountant. They assigned a named case worker with a phone number, who I could call. 10/10 would do - and have done again, as recently as two weeks ago. I love this company.
I used the service for two years and just had the most surreal disastrous experience since the year flipped. I religiously send a the same (about 5k USD) to my home country every month so I can pay my mortgage and other bills I left when moved to NA.
2021 arrives, I start a transfer on January 27, days pass, nothing. I contact support 10 days later (of something that in the past 24 months took 3 days), they say I need to prove I’m the recipient so I ask them to cancel the transfer so I can start it from my personal account instead so both accounts match and no documentation is needed, another 10 days go by, still nothing.
I contact support again and found out that they withheld my deposit because they needed me to give, bear with me, POWER OF ATTORNEY among tons of other more resonable documentation to the destination country bank, so instead of signing my life away I cancel the transfer again: 26 days an counting TransferWise held my money which I will NEVER deal with again and tell this tale whenever I get a chance.
There support used to be bad, now it is atroscious.
The details of my situation are not important, however I was in contact with Christian Krabus - Head of Customer Care (https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-krabus-075a7887/ who it appears no longer works for N26).
I would regular have to ask for status updates; email the managing directors and only then would things get progressed.
My issue stemmed from May 2019 right until Mar 2020; when he stopped responding (and according to linkedin, left the firm).
Basically, every support interaction required multiple pulling of teeth. That should not be how a bank interacts with you, especially when they have your money.
I now use another bank in Berlin, just a normal one, and the interactions are about average ( I ask a question; they take a week to get back to me -- but they *tell* me it will take a week).
I have done this once for my own account and a couple of times for others. They really do look into every detail and will award compensation if it's clear the bank was at fault.
Institutions that don't have this protection include Trasferwise and Revolut, both of which I have had issues with in the past.
Good lord, how much money do you people make in the US?
Every attempt resulted in a message that the image wasn't clear enough. The delays bewteen messages were also days and weeks apart. Eventually I gave up and I no longer have access to the account. Thankfully, there was no money it.
In the US, you can file a small claims easily and without a lawyer. Some jurisdictions will even let you file 100% online, and the filing fees are very low.
After 2 months of Transferwises' excuses, they wired the full amount + legal fees to my account within a few hours of them receiving the notice.
Wasn't sure where to plug the recommendation
Here in Canada, the traditional way I could send money was going to a bank branch , fill out a very long form to be able to do a SWIFT transfer and pay through the nose for it.
Then came VBCE online, an FX company which was OK-ish except you needed to ask them to add everyone wiring you beforehands. And they demanded to have an up to date passport on file.
Then came transferwise and the world turned into a happy place.
However, it's still worse than TransferWise. If a wire transfer is sent via RBC online, the actual amount received by the recipient is frequently $25-27 less which is supposedly due to some random routing fee (it's not possible to specify an intermediary bank in RBC online). As a result, the total cost of a wire transfer ends up being CAD 45-50. In TransferWise a wire transfer costs C$6 to send and the received amount is always the same as the sent. The UI is simple, and the support is helpful (never had problems with them).
Don't get me wrong, I like IBKR and I do use it, but Transferwise is definitely more useful 90% of the time.
It's still mind-blowing to think IBKR charges $20 per million, when the airport Travelex will charge you $20 per hundred lol.
It's a free/cheap multi currency account with local bank details in 6+ countries, which give you 90% of the functionality you want, namely the ability to hold and transfer cash.
If you need more functionality you get a local bank account.
You are too young :-). This also might change. German banks start again to take monthly fees for accounts, so why not for single transactions.
This said, I have to deal with accounts in NZ and Europe. Fees as well as speed for transfers between them is a whole other world when using TW compared to classic banking. These kind of costs have exist forever, SEPA conditions are the exception, not the rule, internationally. TransferWises multi-currency account is a nice part of the package. I learned here today, this can be done even cheaper by using a Forex broker like IB, but I don't need this on a daily basis.
their ACH fees does seem a little more expensive
That’s a dealbreaker for me, but I’m a happy customer of theirs for transfers.
My view is mostly that customer service is broken. Everywhere. A few days ago I wrote and published a "corporate memo" where I make the case that a company such as Stripe could tackle this problem and solve it [0].
I really hope that someone will eventually find a way to provide proper customer service, without resorting to these terrible practices when something gets weird.
[0]: https://simon.medium.com/stripes-opportunity-reinventing-cus...
TransferWise takes customer support extremely seriously with an in-house team of support reps who are trained in all of our features. On top of that each team may have one or more CS "champions" who are the bridge between product teams and customer support. These champions usually know the product inside-out, and are in slack channels with the dev teams.
So when an issue is not a customer misunderstanding something, and turns out to be an actual bug, the CS rep will work with the engineers to find a workaround, and to get a fix deployed as fast as possible - all while the customer knows exactly what's going on.
Bottomline is that I agree that customer support is hard, and very expensive. But it doesn't have to be broken, and I don't think it is at TransferWise (well, Wise now)
It's interesting to see things like https://jimmymow.medium.com/announcing-strike-global-2392b90... and https://pagofx.com/
I really wish them all the best with the new brand and am excited for the new products! Even when I’m just being a tourist, the debit card and borderless card make working in different currencies a breeze.
My only wish is that the debit card issued to us citizens didn’t default to dollar payments but could intelligently mark itself as the local currency. Remember that when a foreign terminal tries to bill you in USD, the bank the card reader is connected to makes profit from marking up exchange rates.
To obtain their debit card, one of the requirements is that I add money to my account. So far so good. When I am on that page where I can enter the amount I want to add, there is always a minimum amount given. This is not in itself a problem. The problem is that - to my surprise - this varies by a LOT, and I have no clue why. Sometimes it is 5 USD, sometimes it is 20 USD. As in, sometimes I can add 5 USD or above, but not less, and sometimes I can only add 20 USD or above, but not less.
By now I went through[1]: 5 USD -> 20 USD -> 1 USD -> 5 USD. Why does this happen?
I do not know the actual values as I was using another currency, but you get the point.
[1] I kept checking only for 2 days, so those values were changing this way within those 48 hours max.
It’s to TW advantage to have a higher minimum deposit, but the drop off is likely higher at higher amounts. They probably test high amounts regularly.
But as a single customer you shouldn’t have seen different amounts. That’s just confusing.
I checked just now, it is back to the initial value, the value that I encountered first.
The competition in this space is large, but there are a ton of trade offs between various services and in many countries (hungary, for one) the local alternatives simply suck.
Nothing could be more representative of modernity than the fact that typing wise into your browser bar will now direct you to a financial services company.
TW for sure reports to my country's financial intelligence agency (AUSTRAC).
I get paid in foreign currency via TW and it's pretty amazing.
In South Africa for example, they've been partnered with exchange4free (dodgy name but legit) but recently changed to Bidvest. If TW isn't reporting, these third parties are. You have to sign mandate forms once a year explicitly for reporting purposes.
I also wonder if they tried to rebrand to "Transfer" as that would at least describe themselves and give them some interesting opportunities, e.g. money.transfer, coin.transfer
Later: Appears they have lowered the threshold to £20000 now (see https://transferwise.com/help/articles/2961856/tips-for-gett...)
Saved > 35kEU in rates - the local bank FX rates were daylight robbery.
Concretely there should be no difference, but your spirit would be less impacted.
I did this when I first used TW many years ago, when I had no idea if the service was reliable and the transfers would take days.
Opening a new account, the happy path steers the user to 2FA via SMS (which can't be disabled once enabled). The only other option is via their proprietary iOS or Android app.
Please, please give us at least TOTP, if not FIDO U2F or Webauthn.
SMS is inherently insecure (arguably worse than e-mail) and I'm not going to download your app.
Nonetheless, not a bad idea, as companies grow they all want the shortest possible brandable .com domain. I remember seomoz.com rebranded to moz.com for few million $$.
Fidelity, for example, charges no fee but a 1% spread, which is a "hidden" fee.
FirstRepublic charges .01% (and thats because we are "small" by institution standards ~50k / transaction).
Most banks are badly set up for consumer size transactions, unless they are by default multi currency (Revolut and Starling come to mind).
The traditional banks may be "no-fee" - but some have charged as much as 2%.
Still nothing on the ultimate rip off - the foreign currency ATMs at airports - fee +5+% spread...
