As Wright Express Corp. expands internationally and creates new products not solely focused on the freight community, it decided it was appropriate to pick a new name.
Wright Express now calls itself WEX Inc.
“It was the natural thing to do,” says Michael Dubyak, chairman, president and CEO of WEX. “Our customers were already calling us that.”
The company already used the nickname on contracts. It also used it for the name of its quarterly performance awards, the Wexellence Awards.
“Over the past three years we’ve transformed the company from being a North America based fleet card company,” Dubyak says.
WEX has been growing quickly and embraces its transformation into the physical, digital and virtual corporate card marketplace, he says.
As the company looked at rebranding, it also collected survey data. The data showed people still thought of some kind of freight company when they heard the name Wright Express. But since WEX has expanded into the online travel and healthcare space in countries such as New Zealand, Brazil and Australia, it wanted a name that would better fit its new role.
WEX also changed its logo. The letters W-E-X sit in a bold red silhouette of a payment card, tilted at an angle, with the tagline, “We see corporate payments differently.”
Dubyak says the card is tilted as a symbol of individuality. People in the industry look at WEX differently because its products integrate into business systems and “run like clockwork,” he says. The precision point creating the “e” speaks to the company’s scrupulous execution, he says.
“We win against very large players in the marketplace,” Dubyak says, citing Citigroup, American Express and GE as competitors it has taken market share from.
Starting as a fleet card payment provider 29 years ago, WEX provides payment control and security to more than 35,000 customers serving more than 6.5 million cardholders.
