TransferWise

Context

Company: TransferWise (now Wise)
Timeframe: 2011–2012
Role: UX+UI Designer (freelance)
Note: Published with client’s consent

Unfair exchange rates and hidden fees of traditional banks drove founders Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus to invent what TechCrunch called the “Skype of currency exchange.” At the time, the company had just secured Seedcamp funding and operated an MVP with a few thousand users and a handful of supported currencies. The signal for market demand was strong, but the website suffered from high bounce rates, low conversion, and low repeated transfers.

Mission

The founders understood that UX design was a powerful lever for accelerating the company’s growth. They hired me to help them improve user acquisition and overall product stickiness.

We quickly realized that trust was the biggest obstacle. Despite the company’s no-brainer value proposition, its radically new p2p model, no formal bank status, and a plethora of online scam stories by other vendors contributed to users’ risk-aversion.

We had to transform a scrappy, unknown startup into a credible financial service.

Contributions

I was responsible for the redesign, from product audit to relaunch, and advised on early marketing.

Hands-on contributions:

• Diagnosed trust as the core problem through qualitative research and traffic analytics
• Designed the UX+UI of the entire digital product: transfer flow, user account dashboard, marketing landing pages, blog, and support section
• Designed a soft-rebrand experiment to align the new website’s visual language with consumers’ expectations of financial institutions
• Improved conversion rate by optimizing transfer flow steps and required fields and applying other proven best practices

Working directly with the founders, I helped shape the direction of the first redesign and advised transparency as the cornerstone of product and marketing, positioning the company as a trustworthy alternative to banks that obscure poor terms with complexity. Beyond the product, I also art-directed the early ads and collaborated with the copywriter on the value proposition and how-it-works pitch.

Results

• Performance: Significant lift in conversion rate, repeated transfers, and LTV (reported but undisclosed)
• Legacy: Core architecture and solutions still in use today
• Impact: Helped secure Series A funding; the company went on to achieve unicorn status

Highlights

Credits

Copywriting: Villu A.
Engineering: Bogdan D. & Alexander L. @ DefaultValue