TransferWise changes name to Wise

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.

This feels like an incredibly ill-advised rebrand. Everyone I know of who uses TransferWise uses it rarely, like once per year. They won&#x27;t be slowly eased into the new name. They&#x27;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&#x27;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.<p>The only way this makes sense is if they&#x27;re intending to sunset the transfers in a couple of years, and are all in on their &quot;we&#x27;re not calling it a bank account, so who knows if we&#x27;re actually regulated like a bank&quot; product.

The logo is very bad. Different angles for different letters? It&#x27;s comically bad. (is it flatter S supposed to remind you of bank <i>wire</i>s) ?<p>Also, top Google search is this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wise.us&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wise.us&#x2F;</a><p>Unbelievably bad rebrand, shockingly so<p>Naming collisions is such an ugly state of affairs

Big fan of TransferWise, been using them for years as they&#x27;re the only FX provider I&#x27;ve used who are actually transparent about their fees which are derived from the real-time <i>actual market rate</i> 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.<p>I get why they&#x27;d want a rebrand to &quot;wise&quot;, similar to &quot;Apple Computer&quot; -&gt; &quot;Apple&quot; when Apple started doing than just computers but IMO it&#x27;s a bit early as they&#x27;re still only known for their core Transferring funds services. At the same time having a short company name &amp; domain like `wise.com` does give the impression of a more global trusted brand for anyone who&#x27;s never heard of them - so I&#x27;d say it&#x27;s a good move for them overall.

I might be one of the rare people who loves Transferwise? I&#x27;ve used them for 5 years, to transfer money from multiple businesses, and personally. I&#x27;ve sent money between businesses, to people internationally, paid for office rent, developers, heck I&#x27;ve done transfers to myself between countries with it.<p>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&#x2F;10 would do - and have done again, as recently as two weeks ago. I love this company.

Great Timing! USERS BEWARE, my story<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.

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

I&#x27;m very happy with TransferWise&#x27; low fees, but their &#x27;borderless&#x27; account is unfortunately no substitute for a real account in the native currency in a lot of cases.

&quot;Horror&quot; stories abound in this thread (of course, all is relative; first world problems; etc).<p>My view is mostly that customer service is broken. Everywhere. A few days ago I wrote and published a &quot;corporate memo&quot; where I make the case that a company such as Stripe could tackle this problem and solve it [0].<p>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.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simon.medium.com&#x2F;stripes-opportunity-reinventing-customer-service-babde2febce4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simon.medium.com&#x2F;stripes-opportunity-reinventing-cus...</a>

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 <i>wise</i> thing to do.

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).<p>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.<p>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.

I love TransferWise, use it all the time. Honestly, pretty surprised by this rebrand, I don&#x27;t get why they did it.

Just wanted to say that I absolutely love the UX&#x2F;UI of transferwise, every time I need to do a transfer I am honestly enjoying the process, well done.

The new Wise logo reminds me a lot of the Visa logo — probably not a coincidence: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wise.com&#x2F;public-resources&#x2F;assets&#x2F;logos&#x2F;wise&#x2F;brand_logo.svg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wise.com&#x2F;public-resources&#x2F;assets&#x2F;logos&#x2F;wise&#x2F;brand_lo...</a>

The reason I am NOT USING TransferWise is that I encountered something strange.<p>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.<p>By now I went through[1]: 5 USD -&gt; 20 USD -&gt; 1 USD -&gt; 5 USD. Why does this happen?<p>I do not know the actual values as I was using another currency, but you get the point.<p>[1] I kept checking only for 2 days, so those values were changing this way within those 48 hours max.

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.

Apologies, but let me put on my cynical hat for a moment to make a joke.<p>Nothing could be more representative of modernity than the fact that typing <i>wise</i> into your browser bar will now direct you to a financial services company.

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

Justin Timberlake: &quot;Drop the &#x27;transfer&#x27;, just &#x27;wise&#x27;, it&#x27;s cleaner&quot;

I&#x27;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&#x2F;have to prove identity etc... I&#x27;m not rich&#x2F;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&#x2F;WU.

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.

I find it interesting that companies often rebrand themselves to a generic word. Would Microsoft, for example gain anything by calling themselves &quot;Micro&quot; or &quot;Soft&quot;?<p>I also wonder if they tried to rebrand to &quot;Transfer&quot; as that would at least describe themselves and give them some interesting opportunities, e.g. money.transfer, coin.transfer

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 (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;off_facebook_activity&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;off_facebook_activity&#x2F;</a>).

Someone didn&#x27;t do their trademark research. Out on the east coast US (like NYC metro) anyone hearing the name Wise isn&#x27;t going to think &#x27;transfer service&#x27;, they are going to think potato chips: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wisesnacks.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wisesnacks.com</a>

Would it be safe to use this if you&#x27;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&#x27;d like to share?

I wish they had the capability to issue virtual card numbers. I don&#x27;t even need temporary ones, just want the capability to segregate my spending into separate accounts.

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&#x27;s financial systems, and if their strong brand position can help to loosen those grips a little, more power to them.

I just wish they would not inherit the horrible security practices from the incumbents.<p>Opening a new account, the happy path steers the user to 2FA via SMS (which can&#x27;t be disabled once enabled). The only other option is via their proprietary iOS or Android app.<p>Please, please give us at least TOTP, if not FIDO U2F or Webauthn.<p>SMS is inherently insecure (arguably worse than e-mail) and I&#x27;m not going to download your app.

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

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.

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&#x27;t figure out how...

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

WHY!? &quot;Wise&quot; is unsearchable, it&#x27;s a common word, this is an idiotic move.

Banks are still cheap when it comes to large amounts.

Whatever the name, always loved their service.