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.
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.
> 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.
In Ireland the app went from being Hailo to MyTaxi to Free Now. Personally I loved Hailo. It became a verb and it was common to say "I'm going to Hailo now". Now it's "I'm going to FreeNow... now". It just doesn't sound as smooth. I still use it but I really feel like Hailo was the ideal name.
Hailo sounds like an extremely clever name for a taxi app, since (at least in US English) one might "hail" a traditional taxi. FreeNow seems clunkier to use as a verb, plus it doesn't seem to connect to the service at all. (Unless the taxi ride is free now!)
Yeah, it worked well. I guess the problem you have is, once you're international, your clever name loses its impact. It was a common joke at the time Free Now launched that the taxis should be free alright.
I mean yeah, that's not rebranding, that's just brand suicide. I hadn't heard about it, that's a fun story.
But in general, people used to a brand always cry out how rebranding will kill the brand and it truly has zero effect. I remember people saying that gmail's logo changing would kill it. Then it happened like two more times. Google rebranded Hangouts/Chat/Whatever like fifteen times and they still somehow have users. And in fintech I've seen tons of successful rebrands despite users doomsdaying them out. Simple, mentioned downthread, is a good example.
People just hate change. I mean look at some of the replies here… I hope they'll be able to read themselves a year from now.
> It's 2 years now with new name, but they iOS app is still named: FREE NOW (mytaxi)
On Android it's even more confusing. Some time ago it changed from "FREE NOW (mytaxi)" to "FREE NOW (Kapten)". At first I feared that they were undergoing another stupid rebranding (or tried to do one to Kapten and then went back on it and I missed that). Turns out that was a company they acquired from the UK, which I assume 90% of existing users never heard of before.
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.
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.
> 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.
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
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.