Transferwise- A simple end to the cost of exchanging money

Transferwise has said to be on track for £100 billion in revenue in 2017 and is profiltable a mere 6 years after being founded.

So how has this ‘money without borders’ concept become so succesful?

The obvious point is to state that the idea itself is close to genius- thought up by two friends from Estonia who were living in different countries to the currency that they were being paid in. One in London needing pounds but being paid in Euros, the other in Estonia being paid in pounds. Thus they used the conversion rate on the day of their salaries and gave each other the money in the required currency to avoid any conversion charges. Hello Transferwise.

But apart from saving people an immense amount of money over the years this may not be the only reason for such success.

 

The ease that Trasnferwise provides its customers to use their service via their website and app is a huge benefit, according to Forbes ‘a companies website is vital for branding and marketing efforts, getting website design wrong can easily lose thousands of dollars’ (2017). In contrast Transferwise’s transactional site and app allows customers to send money to different currencies almost instantly with the money usually taking less than 24 hours to reach the other account.

So how have they made it so easy? According to Adobe ‘38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content/layout is unattractive,’ in the case of Transferwise their website is simple, bold, well branded and easy to use.

Valacich, J. et al. Proposes that website design and meeting the needs of customers is much like a hierarchy. Only once the base needs have been met can the higher level needs be acheievd.

They identified three ‘stages’ of needs for websites. These are:

1. Structurual firmness- This is relates to base level charactersitics of a website such as security, performance, response time aned provisions for privacy. In the case of Transferwise, being in the fintech sector, providing their customers with the highest security levels is of upmost importance. If the website looked untrustworthy, didn’t work properly or looks as if it was unsecure then this would put many potential consumers off of using the service as they are dealing with sensitive information most importantly people’s bank details.
2. Functional conveniance- This relates to a websites ease of use and how the customer interacts with the website. As previously stated one factor that I attribute to the success of the company is the smoothness and ease of transactions. With the homepage connecting you straight with the service you can instantly input the amount of money you would like to send in one currency and it immediately provides you with the exchange rate and how much you will receive. Once you are satisfied you can continue to log in via Facebook or Google (another easy transition) and input your bank details and the bank details of the recipient and it is done.
3. Representational delight- This refers to the charecteristics of a website that ‘stimulate a consumers sense.’ (Valacich, J. et al. 2007)  Including things such as: graphic design and interface consistency. The asthetics of the website are bold, clean and clear, it is branded throughout the multiple info pages and help centre.

 

 

All in all the service that Transferwise offers as well as the ease of use of the service that the website design provides goes hand in hand towards the success of the company.

You can visit the website and check out their services here.

 

References:

Forbes.com. (2017). Forbes Welcome. [online] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ilyapozin/2012/03/27/top-7-web-design-mistakes-small-businesses-make/#63756c036858 [Accessed 24 Oct. 2017].

Valacich, J.S., Parboteeah, D.V. and Wells, J.D., 2007. The online consumer’s hierarchy of needs. Communications of the ACM, 50(9), pp.84-90..