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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 reb

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.

toomuchtodo 6y 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.
- biztos 6y 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?”
  - kiwijamo 6y ago
    It's so simple isn't it! /s
biztos 6y 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 6y 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.
loceng 6y 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 6y ago
Drop (formerly Massdrop) rebranding is also a bad example.
- loceng 6y 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 6y 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.
- scrollaway 6y ago
  No.
atleta 6y 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 6y ago
50/50 chance they pull a Quickster and undo the rebrand I reckon
- alasdair_ 6y 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 6y 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_99 6y 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.
  - manigandham 6y ago
    Does Square or Chase have trouble with their trademark? It's not a big deal.
    - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
      Single words are often used when they don't really have much to do with the underlying product (Apple, Amazon, Mint, etc.) because it can be "branded" for that market. But with Wise, for example there is already a MoneyWise, BudgetWise, etc., so "Wise" by itself may have issues with those other existing businesses.
  - sangnoir 6y ago
    Trademarks are granted within specific fields, so they won't have any trouble defending it against people providing related goods and service (banking/finance/transfers) using a similar mark. The won't be able to defend against someone else using "Wise" in a different field (say, an education platform) but that is as designed. It is unfortunate that large corporations overzealously "defend" their trademarks against all usage of the trademark even in unrelated fields, that is abuse of the process and not how the law was intended to work, they basically drown you with lawyer fees.
    - rodiger 6y ago
alasdair_ 6y 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.
- manigandham 6y ago
  Why would a name change make you more wary?
  - alasdair_ 6y ago
    Because anything unfamiliar (after a year of not using the service) is likely to ring alarm bells.
siquick 6y ago
Seems like a weird idea when there is already a finance company called Wise. https://www.wise.us https://www.wise.us
- arthurcolle 6y ago
  Yup, I mentioned something similar in my post... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26220276 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.
  - globular-toast 6y ago
    The logo looks more like "Wire" at first glance. Really bad.
manigandham 6y 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.
riffraff 6y 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 6y 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.
  - ahoka 6y ago
    On the contrary: Oracle changed their name to the name of their successful product.
refurb 6y 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 6y 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.
- danlugo92 6y ago
  Please keep in mind they are very trigger happy when blocking accounts.
nikolay 6y ago
Meanwhile, there's Wisely, which is widely promoted by ADP.
scrollaway 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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.
  - WA 6y ago
    Piwik to the new name I can't remember. But maybe that's just me.
    - malinens 6y ago
      actually I had problems with package managers when piwik rebranded to mamoto (or matomo?). they renamed all their libraries and it messed up our package proxy server because of that
bambax 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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.

toomuchtodo 6y 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.

biztos 6y 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?”
- kiwijamo 6y ago
  It's so simple isn't it! /s

biztos 6y 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 6y 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.

loceng 6y 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 6y ago

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

loceng 6y 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 6y 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.

scrollaway 6y ago
No.

atleta 6y 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 6y ago

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

alasdair_ 6y 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 6y 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_99 6y 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.
- manigandham 6y ago
  Does Square or Chase have trouble with their trademark? It's not a big deal.
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    Single words are often used when they don't really have much to do with the underlying product (Apple, Amazon, Mint, etc.) because it can be "branded" for that market. But with Wise, for example there is already a MoneyWise, BudgetWise, etc., so "Wise" by itself may have issues with those other existing businesses.
- sangnoir 6y ago
  Trademarks are granted within specific fields, so they won't have any trouble defending it against people providing related goods and service (banking/finance/transfers) using a similar mark. The won't be able to defend against someone else using "Wise" in a different field (say, an education platform) but that is as designed. It is unfortunate that large corporations overzealously "defend" their trademarks against all usage of the trademark even in unrelated fields, that is abuse of the process and not how the law was intended to work, they basically drown you with lawyer fees.
  - rodiger 6y ago

alasdair_ 6y 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.

manigandham 6y ago
Why would a name change make you more wary?
- alasdair_ 6y ago
  Because anything unfamiliar (after a year of not using the service) is likely to ring alarm bells.

siquick 6y ago

Seems like a weird idea when there is already a finance company called Wise. https://www.wise.us https://www.wise.us

arthurcolle 6y ago
Yup, I mentioned something similar in my post... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26220276 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.
- globular-toast 6y ago
  The logo looks more like "Wire" at first glance. Really bad.

manigandham 6y 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.

riffraff 6y 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 6y 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.
- ahoka 6y ago
  On the contrary: Oracle changed their name to the name of their successful product.

refurb 6y 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 6y 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.

danlugo92 6y ago
Please keep in mind they are very trigger happy when blocking accounts.

nikolay 6y ago

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

scrollaway 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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.
- WA 6y ago
  Piwik to the new name I can't remember. But maybe that's just me.
  - malinens 6y ago
    actually I had problems with package managers when piwik rebranded to mamoto (or matomo?). they renamed all their libraries and it messed up our package proxy server because of that

bambax 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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.