This new financial company uses a killer domain to garner credibility.
Hi. Aside from being the abbreviation for Hawaii, it’s one of the most common informal greetings in the English language.
As it turns out, Hi is also a handy brand name. According to LinkedIn, several thousand companies use “Hi” as a part of their listed names. These include an aviation company, a travel platform, and an insurance company.
A newer company is branding purely around the two-letter Hi, though.
Hi, a financial services platform, was founded in 2020 and first came to my attention thanks to Crunchbase highlighting the company’s recent seed funding round.
Currently in private beta, Hi is a blockchain-based banking service that aims to provide a reimagined financial service suite to its customers. Its unconventional take on banking means that, according to Hi, users will soon be able to send money via popular messaging apps.
Financial institutions need to convey trust to potential customers, which can be difficult for a brand new company. Something that Hi has done to emanate trust, longevity, and integrity, is to launch on the perfect domain name.
Yes, Hi operates on the two-letter domain, Hi.com.
Hi.com is a powerful domain, but then again, Hi’s co-founders are no strangers to using premium domains. Stefan Rüst is the former CEO of Bitcoin.com, and Sean Rach is the former CMO of Crypto.com, a domain reportedly acquired for $12 million.
Hi.com itself may have had a 7 figure sale in its history.
In a January 2019 DNJournal article, Ron Jackson mentioned that: “I’ve learned (and seen documentation proving) that MavenDomains.com has brokered a $2.2 million dollar sale of another very nice 2-letter .com.”
According to Archive.org, Hi.com was listed for sale with brokerage company MavenDomains.com until late in 2018, when the name started to redirect to the website of Hi Inc., a Hong Kong-based travel company that closed its doors in August 2019.
It’s unclear whether the financial platform Hi, also based in Hong Kong, acquired the Hi.com domain outright or whether another arrangement has allowed Hi to use the name from launch.
What is clear is that the Hi.com domain has given the team the perfect digital podium to publicize its not-for-profit financial service products.
Already, after only a couple of months, Hi announced that it has surpassed 500,000 members of its private beta program.
