And why I chose Wise instead

I started out as a freelancer this year and I’m ashamed to say that I’m still getting through my backlog of admin like expenses, setting up my website and setting up my pension…

So, last Sunday I decided to bash through my freelancer admin starting with setting up a business bank account.

I already have Revolut, Barclays and Monzo, but I gravitated towards Revolut without hesitation.

Why? Well Barclays’ UI feels old-school and boring, whereas Monzo’s branding screams young-person-starting-a-bank-account-for-the-first-time, and I want to be taken seriously.

I also started with Tide’s onboarding a while back, but didn’t like the UI and I thought it would be better to go for something I’ve downloaded already so that I have fewer apps on my phone.

So, I chose to start with Revolut as it feels more business-chic.

I’m fickle, I know.

But it does go to show you the impact branding has on our subconscious.

What’s very interesting is that whilst I have strong brand affinity to Revolut and its easier for me than a new product, their onboarding managed to alienate me so hard that I decided to set up with a completely new bank: Wise.

Here’s what happened.

So, it’s mid-Sunday morning. I type “revolute business bank acct” into Chrome and get to the search results.

This is where is gets spicy.

The first result is a search ad from Revolut:

Revolut Business Account — Open A Uk Business Account

Nice that the ad is personalised for UK (despite the grammatical error ‘Uk’).

Why are they bidding on their own brand name?

Well, Fintech is a competitive space, and you don’t want to loose out. If I was in a cohort of users who wasn’t so sure on my choice, I may have gone for another business…