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.
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.
- daily spending on goods and services
- electronic transfers to ewallets*
- any time someone needs to send me money, I use transferwise virtual account details so from their end it seems like a domestic transfer
- I even bought a motorcycle using Transferwise to do a local bank transfer. Tried it with my regular (foreign) bank first and it failed, tried it with Transferwise and it worked fine.
*my traditional bank doesn't support this. They only know how to deposit to a domestic ewallet, Transferwise can do deposits in ewallets internationally
I use it as my primary spending debit card. I travel a lot, use it in random ATMs and I keep it topped up just enough that I wouldn't be devastated if the account contents were stolen. Also use the money transfer side monthly to pay rent in a foreign country.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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
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.