TransferWise changes name to Wise

https://wise.com/gb/blog/world-meet-wise

by watbe • 5 years ago

243 226 5 years ago

xmodem• 5 years ago

I'm very happy with TransferWise' low fees, but their 'borderless' account is unfortunately no substitute for a real account in the native currency in a lot of cases.

hiq2• 5 years ago

The deal breaker for me is the fee for bank transfers, something I've never paid for before.

f4302• 5 years ago

how much is Dwolla in comparison?

their ACH fees does seem a little more expensive

Anderkent2• 5 years ago

Where do you live? Bank wires are pretty expensive everywhere I've seen. (local bank transfers like ACH are free on TW too)

mbeex• 5 years ago

The deal breaker for me is the fee for bank transfers, something I've never paid for before.

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.

panarky• 5 years ago

What are the limitations?

jen202• 5 years ago

One in the US is that you cannot use a borderless account for ACH transactions initiated by the counterparty (despite it presenting the details that make it look like you can).

biztos3• 5 years ago

The list of countries where the fees are lower than just using your card from $OTHER_COUNTRY is very short.

That’s a dealbreaker for me, but I’m a happy customer of theirs for transfers.

Gladdyu2• 5 years ago

I'm not sure whether their fees are really that low. For transfers between your own accounts, for anything over very small amounts, I found that their 0.35% variable fee is pretty large compared to adding the funds to a brokerage account and then doing the conversion there (ie. IB charges 0.002% on currency trades, with a min of $2), and transferring back out into the desired currency.

arcticbull2• 5 years ago

Yeah, you're definitely paying a premium for them handling smaller quantities, end-to-end, in one easy tool. IBKR requires knowledge of Forex trading, but is hands down the cheapest and fastest solution - for those that are able to work it. To be fair, that describes basically all of IBKR.

It's still mind-blowing to think IBKR charges $20 per million, when the airport Travelex will charge you $20 per hundred lol.

owenversteeg• 5 years ago

Well, for starters most transfers I and my friends have had to make are not to our own accounts. There's also the time issue - I have an IB account, and love it, but most of the time I'm using Transferwise because I'm in a different country and paying someone, or because I need to move money between my own accounts quickly. Transferwise is literally instant for about half the transfers they do, which is incredible. Meanwhile with IBKR I'm usually out at least three business days for any USD funds to show up in IBKR, plus whatever time to wait on the foreign currency side. Then there's also the UI - sometimes I need someone else to transfer the money, or IBKR's login system is locking me out, etc etc, and in those cases Transferwise always wins. Or if I'm transferring under 25k and I need to do it outside of market hours - in that case my transaction is an odd lot at IBKR, getting me (oftentimes) bad rates, and I might as well use Transferwise.

Don't get me wrong, I like IBKR and I do use it, but Transferwise is definitely more useful 90% of the time.

tcpekin• 5 years ago

Could you explain how this works, or point me in the right direction on what to read? I'm interested in not using Transferwise as much if this is better.

dkjaudyeqooe3• 5 years ago

You're probably right, but that's not the point.

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.

jcun41282• 5 years ago

I've had good experience with TWise, sending money can be such a pain. WU was okay but after you exceed some amount start to get blocked/have to prove identity etc... I'm not rich/not sending massive amounts but was still getting flagged early on. TW is working pretty well so far, so is WU after I sent some docs. I tried a few other companies too but yeah settled on TW/WU.

mtmail• 5 years ago

We use it for business regularly and repeat transfers become faster over time. We had freelancers (EUR->GBP) receive their money in 2 days, after a while it was down to hours and we even saw 1 hour transfers. The limit became the receiving back making the funds available to the bank account owner.

frosted-flakes• 5 years ago

WU = Western Union?

jcun41282• 5 years ago

Yeah, they're great for the cash pickup transfers i.e. no receiver bank

jsnell• 5 years ago

This feels like an incredibly ill-advised rebrand. Everyone I know of who uses TransferWise uses it rarely, like once per year. They won't be slowly eased into the new name. They'll try using the service again for the first time in a while, and everything will have changed to look like a phishing scam. And this is a service where that trust is critical, since the interaction model of the service is so odd. I'm transferring a 5 figure amount of money to a middleman, and hoping to get 99% of it back in a few days. That requires a bit of a leap of faith.

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.

tonystubblebine• 5 years ago

We use it multiple times a month and seemingly the people that want to be paid this way from us seem very familiar with it. Not sure which of our anecdotes are closer to the actual truth.

fookyong2• 5 years ago

I and most people in my circle of friends use Transferwise on a daily basis, multiple times a day. It has replaced our "traditional" bank cards.

FWIW, I totally understand the bigger picture goals they describe in this post and I wish them every success.

aikinai• 5 years ago

Honest question, what do you do with it multiple times a day? You use it as your regular bank and a debit card or something?

kiwijamo4• 5 years ago

Funnily enough it costs more in fees for me to use Wise as my daily account so I've kept my traditional bank cards! I do suspect it varies by country. I'm fortunate in New Zealand that banks generally offer fee-free accounts with reasonable terms and conditions.

spicyramen• 5 years ago

I think it depends,I was transferring for a year my money overseas and then yes rarely used it. I would think they want to capture the people that send money from high income countries to lower income and freelancers. Those are probably the core customers

simonklitj3• 5 years ago

Use it monthly. Have salary from foreign country, and simply keep a bank account there, then transfer it to US with (Transfer)Wise. Rebrand won't matter, as I guess I would always Google "Transfer Wise" either way, if nothing comes up for the query "Wise".

TheColorYellow• 5 years ago

Newly in a similar situation myself.

Are there tax implications in the US for doing this type of transfer monthly?

nly4• 5 years ago

They're big win going forward is their business banking product rather than personal banking offering.

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.

DangerousPie2• 5 years ago

I'm sure they will keep transferwise.com and have a big announcement on there showing to tell people about the new name. I don't think that will look too suspicious. Sure, it might give you a moment's pause, but it will be pretty clear that it's legit. Plus, I'm guessing they will send an email or two about it as well.

crummy• 5 years ago

TransferWise makes it easy to forget how much of a pain it was to send money around internationally before.

chx2• 5 years ago

That pain is so huge I just can't forget it. I am a Canadian resident , a dual Canadian-Hungarian citizen, my brother has accounts in Austria and Hungary, my clients are in the USA chiefly but also all over the EU. So international wires are quite a thing.

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.

dgudkov• 5 years ago

Many Canadian banks allow sending wire transfers online. For instance, with RBC you can send up to CAD 10K equivalent online for a CAD 15-20 fee. The UI is rather simple and they even have 2FA for transfers. RBC also has the more advanced RBC Express for online banking but I don't know much about it.

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).

dzhiurgis3• 5 years ago

Can someone answer how TransferWise gets away without "reporting this information to HMRC or any other tax authority." aka dream for tax evaders (who get paid in foreign currency)?

regecks• 5 years ago

Why do you say they get away with it?

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.

dzhiurgis3• 5 years ago

What do you mean "for sure"? They claim they don't - https://transferwise.com/help/articles/2932394/how-does-tax-...

mrleinad• 5 years ago

I'd love to hear an answer for this one.

TheCapeGreek• 5 years ago

Most likely because they pass that buck to their local partners.

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.

colincooke• 5 years ago

I love transferwise, depend on it often. I don't get the rebrand, their old name was descriptive, easy to google, and from all perspectives really good. The rebrand won't change me using it, but I really can't see the positive in this.

toomuchtodo2• 5 years ago

Definitely agree, akin to when BankSimple rebranded to Simple. It was awesome as is.

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.

biztos3• 5 years ago

Funny, in my market “SimplePay” rebranded as “Simple” and I just had to double check my “Simple” iPhone app to make sure it wasn’t the former BankSimple.

It wasn’t. So I guess there must be multiple apps called “Simple?”

biztos3• 5 years ago

Maybe it’s just that the name became available and the boss always wanted a short, dictionary-word name? Dreams of ubiquity?

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.

Tenoke• 5 years ago

They already had a lot of brand recognition that this really strikes me as odd as well. I'm guessing this is a better name for an IPO?

Edit: A quick googling confirms they've indeed started talking about an IPO recently.

loceng2• 5 years ago

It's when grounded design decisions become ungrounded. Sure, creating an umbrella company called Wise - where TransferWise is one segment they're targeting would be a good way to do it, and then launch other products under Wise, but they shouldn't rebrand TransferWise to Wise.

fomine3• 5 years ago

Drop (formerly Massdrop) rebranding is also a bad example.

loceng2• 5 years ago

Not quite the same - but LikeALittle died a quick death when they rebranded to LAL.com - along with changing their amateur-looking Craigslist-simple type site into some overly clean and sharp looking, which didn't fit with the personality of LikeALittle at all; it was the design that killed it, the designers not actually understanding the implications/consequences of the changes they made - so it was luck that their first design went viral, perhaps leadership hired new designers, ignored the initial designer(s) - if they tried to put up a fight at all to the changes, no idea.

crossroadsguy• 5 years ago

Has there been leadership change recently?

A shiny new top executive just trying to mark their territory in the best way known to humans and canines.

scrollaway3• 5 years ago

No.

atleta• 5 years ago

Yeah, pretty stupid name, if you want to google it. Why they made the change was explained in the blog post: the old name was too specific and describing only one of their services (the one that they have launched with), that is, international transfers. But they already provide foreign bank account numbers (a.k.a. borderless accounts, which I depend on a lot) and you can keep a balance, and convert money and they have a debit card as well. Almost like banking. And I'm pretty sure they want to get into banking.

TheRealSteel• 5 years ago

50/50 chance they pull a Quickster and undo the rebrand I reckon

alasdair_3• 5 years ago

Amway and Netflix should have just merged instead.

MLM House of Cards sequel where only diamond level and above members can unlock the final episode?

rorykoehler• 5 years ago

I found their name to have been outlived by the specs of their service offering. Transferwise is about much more than transferring money these days.

hn_throwaway_992• 5 years ago

But at least "TransferWise" is unique, clearly about money, easily searchable, and defendable as a trademark.

"Wise" is very generic, and worse my guess is that they'll have a hell of a time defending that trademark.

alasdair_3• 5 years ago

Completely agree. They are a fantastic service that (as others have suggested they do as well) I use about once a year and recommend to others about twice a year.

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.

manigandham3• 5 years ago

Why would a name change make you more wary?

siquick• 5 years ago

Seems like a weird idea when there is already a finance company called Wise.

https://www.wise.us

arthurcolle2• 5 years ago

Yup, I mentioned something similar in my post...

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.

manigandham3• 5 years ago

Branding matters. The company is evolving from money transfers to more banking services. The fact that so many are resistant to the change because they consider the company to only do transfers is exactly the reason and the proof for why the rebrand makes sense.

Wise might be generic but encapsulates financial services well and fits in with all the other similar brands like Stripe, Square, Simple, Chase, etc.

riffraff3• 5 years ago

my understanding is they want to move further into financial services and "transfer-" was unnecessarily limiting.

As you say yourself, the old name _waa_ "descriptive" but they have not been a simple transfer service for many years.

kiplkipl• 5 years ago

There is a common pattern where a startup is named after their main product, grows to the point of needing diversification, and starts being limited by their name.

On the other hand, Amazon worked around it.

refurb6• 5 years ago

I’m assuming it’s a move away from their core offering of transfers and currency exchanges into a more broad banking offering.

virgilp• 5 years ago

The rebrand won't change me using it, but I really can't see the positive in this.

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.

danlugo922• 5 years ago

Please keep in mind they are very trigger happy when blocking accounts.

nikolay2• 5 years ago

Meanwhile, there's Wisely, which is widely promoted by ADP.

scrollaway3• 5 years ago

Prediction: zero negative will come out of the name change or redesign, and three years from now they'll be bigger than ever. I'm long on them and they haven't even IPO'd yet. Can't wait for them, and Stripe.

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.

mrisoli• 5 years ago

Worst one I can think of is ConvertKit's rebrand that was so bad they went back on it(kept the new logo, but reverted the name change because it had some religious meaning), then again, it's not as big of a brand as TransferWise.

porker• 5 years ago

Seriously, have you ever seen a rebrand negatively affect a product?

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.

jarek83• 5 years ago

Seriously, have you ever seen a rebrand negatively affect a product?

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.

ksec• 5 years ago

Can't wait for them, and Stripe.

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.

LynxInLA• 5 years ago

Netflix rebranding their DVD business as "Qwikster" for about a month comes to mind. That was more substantial than just a rebrand.

calmworm• 5 years ago

Seriously, have you ever seen a rebrand negatively affect a product?

Buy.com switching to Rakuten.com comes to mind.

bambax• 5 years ago

Agreed. I'm a very happy customer of TransferWise, and I have tested many of their competitors which are mostly awful. But this is unnecessary, confusing and irritating.

IMHO, not a good sign for where the company is headed.

bromuro• 5 years ago

They offer multi-currency accounts - limit their brand to the transfer part is not descriptive at all :) Also they have enough customers to not worry how easy is to search their name on google.

tim333• 5 years ago

Another transferwise fan but I can see it being more high status from the marketing point of view. Like in the old days banks had fancy marble buildings to show they had money and now have expensive domain names. See also stripe vs slash dev slash payments.

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.

mam2• 5 years ago

I think it may be beause of "Transfermate" which does similar things. When i read the title i didn't know if it was the serviced i used 2 years ago.

endisneigh• 5 years ago

I find it interesting that companies often rebrand themselves to a generic word. Would Microsoft, for example gain anything by calling themselves "Micro" or "Soft"?

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

m00dy• 5 years ago

Banks are still cheap when it comes to large amounts.

nikolay2• 5 years ago

Anything over $4K is cheaper and faster with banks like Mercury, which takes just $20 for wires.

fadesibert• 5 years ago

Depends on your definitions of cheap and large. Some banks are very good at FX in the 5,6,7 figure range. Others aren't.

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...

computator• 5 years ago

Would it be safe to use this if you're transferring a very large amount of money, for example to buy a house in a foreign country? Anyone have experiences (good or bad) with large transfers they'd like to share?

dkjaudyeqooe3• 5 years ago

I'd look at other options like OFX, they end up being cheaper for large transfers and are geared towards the kind of transfer you mention.

toomuchtodo2• 5 years ago

+1 of OFX. I use TransferWise a lot for cross border treasury management, but used OFX when moving $large_sum USD->EUR to buy a flat in the EU because they offered a better conversion rate.

welder• 5 years ago

Yes, I did that and it worked fine.

wildfire4• 5 years ago

I have used it to pay a large foreign tax bill, so not quite a house. If the amount is GBP£30000 (might have changed now), you can arrange a longer pay-in time (normally it is 24 hours) and they will let you have the cash sit in your account for up to a week and then find the right rate.

Later: Appears they have lowered the threshold to £20000 now (see https://transferwise.com/help/articles/2961856/tips-for-gett...)

lmm• 5 years ago

They are not covered by any kind of FDIC equivalent (and in fairness there's not really any good deposit insurance regime for international accounts). They claim to use ringfenced accounts for customer funds but AIUI that's all self-certified (and wasn't there at all when they first started, although I understand they've gotten a bit more professional in various ways). I wouldn't worry too much about making a one-off transfer under normal circumstances - the risk of them going bankrupt in the next week is pretty low - but I'd be a little wary of keeping a substantial balance with them over the long term.

riffraff3• 5 years ago

I would advice doing it in batches, you pay by percentage on doing multiple transfers doesn't affect you on the monetary level.

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.

kweks• 5 years ago

Completed multiple 7 figure transfers on a virgin account without a hitch - for the very reason of purchasing abroad.

Saved > 35kEU in rates - the local bank FX rates were daylight robbery.

jamshidhashimi• 5 years ago

I applied last year to use their services for my officially registered company based in Canada. They didn’t approve it, and when I asked for the reason, they said it is their algorithms. It was not wise thing to do.

mythz• 5 years ago

Big fan of TransferWise, been using them for years as they're the only FX provider I've used who are actually transparent about their fees which are derived from the real-time actual market rate at time of submitting the transfer - which end up being substantially lower (and much faster to deliver) than any other FX service I used to use.

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.

Kwpolska• 5 years ago

“Apple Computer” wasn’t how anyone referred to the company, basically ever. Nobody calls it “Apple Inc.” today (outside of legal stuff, of course). But I doubt anyone called the fintech “Wise” before the rebrand.

usaphp• 5 years ago

Just wanted to say that I absolutely love the UX/UI of transferwise, every time I need to do a transfer I am honestly enjoying the process, well done.

zlwaterfield• 5 years ago

I love TransferWise, use it all the time. Honestly, pretty surprised by this rebrand, I don't get why they did it.

arthurcolle2• 5 years ago

The logo is very bad. Different angles for different letters? It's comically bad. (is it flatter S supposed to remind you of bank wires) ?

Also, top Google search is this: https://www.wise.us/

Unbelievably bad rebrand, shockingly so

Naming collisions is such an ugly state of affairs

simonklitj3• 5 years ago

Woah, that's a rough collision too.

cl3misch• 5 years ago

Am I the only one thinking this collision might be intentional?

DangerousPie2• 5 years ago

Well the top Google result may obviously change once their site becomes more established.

The name collision isn't great, but then again Transferwise was already somewhat of a collision with the other Wise anyway.

fumblebee• 5 years ago

I can't help but see the Visa logo when I look at the new Wise logo. Intentional, maybe?

JacobSuperslav• 5 years ago

i think this is a genius rebranding considering the similarity of the word Wise to Visa.

andreareina• 5 years ago

I wish they had the capability to issue virtual card numbers. I don't even need temporary ones, just want the capability to segregate my spending into separate accounts.

mmerlin2• 5 years ago

Virtual Cards can help you pinpoint which of your service providers got hacked, plus minimise the amount of OTHER services you need to update payment details for, after a card number going AWOL

mamborambo• 5 years ago

Although the rebranding is probably unnecessary, it is still a good move if the company has ambition beyond fund transfer --- perhaps into alternative financial services, non-bank assets, or other types of nomadic fund application. I have to agree there are too many geographical restrictions in today's financial systems, and if their strong brand position can help to loosen those grips a little, more power to them.

MaheshC• 5 years ago

I use transferwise as my main bank. The one thing I need from them now is the possibility to invest my borderless account funds in ETF or other guaranteed capital investment vehicles. I hope this rebrand means they are heading in that direction.

riffraff3• 5 years ago

I've literally asked for this in every user satisfaction survey they've sent me for the last 5 years, and like you I hope this is a sign they're heading in this direction.

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.

joecool1029• 5 years ago

Someone didn't do their trademark research. Out on the east coast US (like NYC metro) anyone hearing the name Wise isn't going to think 'transfer service', they are going to think potato chips: https://www.wisesnacks.com

arcticbull2• 5 years ago

I see this like Delta Faucets and Delta Airlines. I've never had any trouble thinking of one when I meant the other, and I suspect the same is true here.

MagnumPIG• 5 years ago

I assume they did and figured nobody would mistake a chips brand with an FX service. Legally I'm sure it's not a problem.

sumedh• 5 years ago

There is also another wise.us service.

mmerlin2• 5 years ago

Trademarks have 40+ categories. Look up how many trademarks with the word "acme" in them can happily coexist.

keiferski• 5 years ago

Apologies, but let me put on my cynical hat for a moment to make a joke.

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.

kylehotchkiss• 5 years ago

I got married abroad and that often implies needing a service like TransferWise. When I first got married, I actually thought I’d need to use hsbc (who sort of support online wire transfers) but thanks to TransferWise, I’ve never once had to send a wire transfer. TransferWise sends money more quickly to my wife than I can send between my own bank accounts in USA. Very reasonable (but sometimes random) KYC (make sure to maintain your drivers license at a permanent address where you can receive mail in your home country).

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.

emp_2• 5 years ago

Great Timing! USERS BEWARE, my story

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.

climb_stealth• 5 years ago

Thanks for the warning! Have you decided on what you are going to use instead?

emp_2• 5 years ago

Going to try Xoom next, looking at conversion rates plus the big name behind (Paypal) which is not short of horror stories themselves.

esperent• 5 years ago

Unfortunately I have come to believe there is no banking service that won't do things like this at some point. For example, I used to swear by N26 until I had a small issue (involving some tiny amount <€50). I told support very politely that I wasn't happy. Their response was full nuclear "pay everything immediately or we're sending your details to a collection agency". I was amazed, I had been a loyal customer for years and this was such a disproportionate response to something tiny. I had been intending to try and work things out,but from that response I simply withdrew all the money from my account and closed it. Now I use Transferwise, and have had no such problems, so far. But I'm under no illusions that I won't have problems in the future.

dazc3• 5 years ago

In the UK we have the Financial Conduct Authority. For a registered financial institution you have protection of, I think, something like £80,000 in case the bank goes bust and you can also ask them to investigate any complaint.

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.

wildfire4• 5 years ago

This. I also used N26.

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).

dazc3• 5 years ago

Not quite so severe but I had a problem logging in which resulted in my account being frozen until I could prove my identity. This was a simple matter of providing a selfie whilst holding a photo ID.

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.

eafkuor2• 5 years ago

I religiously send a the same (about 5k USD) to my home country every month

Good lord, how much money do you people make in the US?

jeofken5• 5 years ago

You’d be surprised how rich a society can be with a high IQ demographics, low taxes (I.e. barriers), and free enterprise. In Europe, landlocked no-oil Switzerland is a good example of this.

ranguna6• 5 years ago

I guess that's the up side of not having free education, free health care system and a good social security.

lazyasciiart• 5 years ago

Well, that's almost enough to match the median household income in the US ($68k) so you probably don't want to extrapolate too far from what they make.

jaspax• 5 years ago

5k per month is 60k per year. A typical developer makes at least 100k per year in the US; but if you are only support yourself then you can easily live on 40k per year outside of SV and a few other high-rent areas. The math checks out. And sending 60% of your salary back home is something that plenty of people do.

marban• 5 years ago

Same with Klarna or Revolut. I've come to the conclusion that Zawinski's Law for Fintechs goes like: Every Fintechs attempts to expand until it adds customer support.

nly4• 5 years ago

For anyone in the UK looking for alternatives for simple transfers and no interest in another banking service I've had good experiences with Azimo.

Wasn't sure where to plug the recommendation

postingawayonhn• 5 years ago

A relative of mine recently had their account permanently terminated for attempting to do a low six figures transfer. They had been a customer for at least a year and frequently used their TransferWise debit card during that period.

danlugo922• 5 years ago

For anyone reading: use normal banks, dont use these EMIs they are very very trigger happy and won't think twice about blocking your money.

112012123• 5 years ago

As someone that had a similar experience with Transferwise (actually also a 5k transfer), I'll give you a piece of advice: sue them.

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.

johnisgood2• 5 years ago

The reason I am NOT USING TransferWise is that I encountered something strange.

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.

refurb6• 5 years ago

Sounds you got caught up in A/B testing maybe?

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.

johnisgood2• 5 years ago

Yeah, it confused the heck out of me, and made me reluctant to use it, because who knows what else they may change. The differences were huge in my currency. :/

I checked just now, it is back to the initial value, the value that I encountered first.

simonebrunozzi• 5 years ago

"Horror" stories abound in this thread (of course, all is relative; first world problems; etc).

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...

aurbano• 5 years ago

I'm not sure if you're directing this comment at TransferWise or at companies in general, but I'll reply from TransferWise's point of view - Disclaimer, I'm an engineer at TransferWise, but this is my own opinion.

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)

throwaway34543• 5 years ago

It's interesting to see your take on how things work however from reading around it would appear that Wise is pretty trigger happy to terminate accounts and almost anti crypto.

It's interesting to see things like https://jimmymow.medium.com/announcing-strike-global-2392b90... and https://pagofx.com/

dharma1• 5 years ago

Why mess up a great brand? TransferWise rolls off the tongue just fine and does what it says. This is like Facebook rebranding to Book. Hubris.

cik• 5 years ago

I might be one of the rare people who loves Transferwise? I've used them for 5 years, to transfer money from multiple businesses, and personally. I've sent money between businesses, to people internationally, paid for office rent, developers, heck I've done transfers to myself between countries with it.

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.

lm28469• 5 years ago

I also loves it and I've been using it for 5 years. I regularly transfer money internationally and it works in 24-48 hours for a few dollars per transfer

pmlnr• 5 years ago

WHY!? "Wise" is unsearchable, it's a common word, this is an idiotic move.

ElectricMind• 5 years ago

Ironically not wise. I think Seth Godin will not be pleased. This is against niche philosophy - I was good at something then I wanted to do everything - then I went bankrupt. I like TransferWise but this is ridiculous move.

EastSmith• 5 years ago

Hope they stop sending my data to Facebook. I am their customer for a little over an year now and I was very disapointed to find out they send a lot of stuff to Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/).

zed88• 5 years ago

Whatever the name, always loved their service.

trestenhortz• 5 years ago

Wise is far less memorable and searchable and identifiable and unique than TransferWise.

AlessandroA• 5 years ago

The new Wise logo reminds me a lot of the Visa logo — probably not a coincidence: https://wise.com/public-resources/assets/logos/wise/brand_lo...

3np• 5 years ago

I just wish they would not inherit the horrible security practices from the incumbents.

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.

platty• 5 years ago

Justin Timberlake: "Drop the 'transfer', just 'wise', it's cleaner"

ajonit• 5 years ago

For the kind of service they provide, transfer.com would have been better. (Of course if it all it was possible)

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 $$.

Nightvein• 5 years ago

I was trying to figure out a way to move my GBP from my US based paypal account through TransferWise to avoid the Paypal FX rate, but couldn't figure out how...

TransferWise changes name to Wise

Related Stories