TransferWise Rebrands To Wise

TransferWise will change its name to simply Wise, a press release says, which will reflect the broader change of the company beyond its original roots as a money transfer company.

Wise was initially launched in 2011 with just money transfer services.

However, its services have expanded in the time since to include cross-border payments, enacting a network and working to make international banking easier, cheaper and quicker for customers.

The company processes £4.5 billion in cross-border transactions per month.

The release says Wise will preside over three products, with money transfers still being fundamental to the business.

It will work as Wise alone, working to “build the world’s most international account.” There it will let people send and spend money internationally, hold money in 55 currencies and get real account numbers in 10 currencies.

It will also operate Wise Business, a global business account which will come with features like a personal account, bank feeds, mass payouts and multi-user access.

And finally, there is the Wise Platform, which companies use to tap into Wise’s infrastructure and aid their customers in getting easier, cheaper payments and international banking features.

“Today our name catches up with who we’re already building for — a community of people and businesses with multi-currency lives. That community now even includes the banks themselves,” Kristo Käärmann, CEO and co-founder, said, according to the release. “We’ve evolved to fix more than just money transfer, but the core experience of using Wise will remain faster, cheaper, and more convenient than anything else. Our mission remains the same. We’re still making — and always will be making — money work without borders.”

Nicholas Lembo, head of America growth for Wise, said the legacy approaches used by many banks have held back cross-border pay from being as efficient as possible. Instead, the process involves correspondent banks sending money from one to the next before reaching their final destinations, with added costs because of the banks’ fees.