UK-based fintech unicorn Transferwise has announced its renaming to Wise. According to the company press release, customers can now opt in to the new home website: Wise.com. The final switchover for all customers to the Wise brand will take place in March 2021.
Kristo Käärmann, CEO and co-founder, Wise said: “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. 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.”
Moving money around the world
Co-founded by Taavet Hinrikus and Kristo Käärmann in 2011, Wise is all about moving money worldwide in the best possible way. With the Wise account, people and businesses can hold 55 currencies, transfer money between countries and spend money abroad.
Around 10 million people and businesses use Wise, which processes over £4.5 billion in cross-border transactions every month, saving customers over £1 billion a year. The company has so far raised $1.1 billion (approx £784 million) to date at a valuation of $5 billion (approx £3.5 billion)
At present, Wise has three products:
- Wise – It let users send and spend money internationally, hold money in 55 currencies and get real account numbers in 10 currencies. Customers now hold over £3 billion in Wise, with 1.4 million debit cards issued.
- Wise Business – It has all the features of the personal account plus extras like bank feeds, mass payouts, and multi-user access. Over 150,000 businesses joined Wise in the last 12 months.
- Wise Platform – The platform banks and companies like Monzo, GoCardless, and Xero use to tap into the Wise infrastructure, giving their customers cheaper, faster payments and international banking features. Wise Platform is live with banks in 10 countries across four continents.
In the last financial year, the company witnessed its annual revenue grew by 70% to £302.6 million. Also, the business has consistently reported a profit since 2017.
In December 2020, Wise announced that it’s planning to add 750 jobs in the next six months with 175 of the roles based in London and another 70 in Singapore.
Partnership with Visa
Last month, Wise announced its partnership with Visa to work on Visa Cloud Connect, a new way for fintechs and partners to securely connect Visa’s global processing network, VisaNet, through the cloud.
Visa Cloud Connect underpins a new global agreement between Visa and TransferWise that will enable the expansion of TransferWise’s multi-currency debit cards in the Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, U.K., and US.
The post London fintech unicorn TransferWise rebrands to Wise appeared first on UKTN (UK Tech News).
