Odds are that ING Direct Canada will soon by called Tangerine.
David and Michael Castello recently sold Tangerine.com for $100,000, as reported on DNJournal this week.
The buyer? ING Direct Canada.
George Kirikos, a Canadian domain name investor, just tweeted out that he believes ING Direct Canada is about to change its name to Tangerine:
Scotiabank announced a deal about a year ago to acquire the company, and time is running out for it to change the bank’s name.
Kirikos also noticed that Tangerine.ca recently changed hands. The new owner – which is surely ING Direct Canada – transferred the domain name to brand protection registrar CSC.
Capital One bought the U.S. version of ING Direct and has since renamed it Capital One 360.
ING Direct has an orange brand, so this rebranding is quite clever.
George Kirikos says
It appears the Castello Brothers left a lot of money on the table, selling that domain name for a mere $100,000…
AbdulBasit Makrani says
Nice sale. ING Direct got this domain for decent price. IMO, Castello brothers could have fetched more for this high quality domain.
Their slogan says Forward Banking and they might want ForwardBanking dot com in future which is owned by me. Any feedback on this is welcome 🙂
J says
Yes, Castello Bros really dropped the ball here. .Com of any really cool object that people can visualize (Mint, Lion, Tangerine) is worth at least $50K per year. Tangerine is a little on a long side with spelling issues, but it’s still a cool object.
George Kirikos says
Both “wwwtangerine” typo domains (.com and .ca) were just registered and parked at DomainSponsor (not by me), which represents a brand protection failure on the part of those working with ING Direct Canada or ScotiaBank (assuming that Tangerine.com will be the name chosen for the rebranding).
Greta says
I don’t know if I would be second guessing these guys. $100k seems like a lot of money to me. Anyone know what they originally paid for it?
Robbie says
Here is the thing, since ING only operates in canada, they could go in alone with the .ca, they probably made it clear, it was just an optional purchase, and they weren’t willing to chase it.
Ed says
“Here is the thing, since ING only operates in canada…”
ING is active in the US as well, as well as other countries.
George Kirikos says
There seems to be a little bit of confusion. ING is a global bank based in the Netherlands. When they were expanding, they started divisions in Canada and in the US.
After the recent financial crisis, they decided to scale back their global operations. They sold the Canadian division to Bank of Nova Scotia (aka ScotiaBank). They sold the US division to Capital One.
As part of those deals, the acquiring banks agreed to give up the “ING” branding in the local divisions. Capital One renamed the ING USA division to “Capital One 360”. ScotiaBank has to do the same for the Canadian division of ING that they acquired. In all likelihood, given the domain acquisitions, that new branding will be “Tangerine.”
So, Robbie meant that “ING Direct Canada” (i.e. the division owned by ScotiaBank) only operates in Canada. The former US ING (now Capital One 360) is an entirely different entity, with completely different ownership.
Owning the .com, even though it’s a Canadian entity, is a wise move, since many Canadian would still type the .com. Many Canadian banks also do business in the US, so it’d give ScotiaBank another potential brand they could leverage in the US one day in the future.
Robbie says
Yes, George is right, I think they will keep this brand local to Canada, due to Canadian banking regulations are much stricter than US.
Scotiabank is not new to this business guys, they purchased ETrade’s Canadian accounts as well, and rebranded to Scotia iTrade.
The Costello brothers obviously have deep pockets, and a lot of experience in dealing with big domain deals. If they could have got more than $100K they would have got it, they obviously hit the max mark scotia was willing to go.
Yes, having the .com adds value, but if scotia wanted to go in with the .ca, they could have, looks like playing hardball worked at $100K, they got an asset which has fair market value, they aren’t out of pocket big money. As well banks in Canada make billions of dollars, as there are maybe only 4-5 house banks in Canada which control the majority of marketshare.
Snoopy says
“Yes, Castello Bros really dropped the ball here. .Com of any really cool object that people can visualize (Mint, Lion, Tangerine) is worth at least $50K per year.”
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In what way did they drop the ball?
I think they got 10-20 times what the name is worth. Should every seller assume it is Microsoft at the door when in 99% of cases it is not?
Robbie says
I actually have bank accounts with ING in CANADA, and I have not received any mailings to explain Scotia buyout, I read they have until may 2014 to choose a new name, If you look at names like TangerineBanking.com which were registered in June of this year, buy the same Canadian web company, it obviously took many months to get this deal done folks.
Owen Frager says
see http://ing.us/orangemoney?kmas=332
tangerine is their corporate color, even the color of money
I expect that Capital One will launch it as a credit card or as an app like Citibank’s “pop money” which is big with parents wiring money to their college kids https://online.citibank.com/US/JRS/pands/detail.do?ID=PopMoney
(actually the reAL COLOR is orange but since that is taken as a domain… close is second best) Colors are great because they transcend culture, geographies, languages
George Kirikos says
It’s now official, see the Tangerine.com website, which was just updated.
Andrew Allemann says
Thanks George. This post was getting a lot of traffic this morning ahead of the announcement
fizz says
Traffic spike probably from this Canadian news article:
http://o.canada.com/business/tangerine-scotiabank-ing/
Noticed a domain reg on 01 Nov which I thought may have been the bank grabbing a close name or two, but it’s under privacy and goes to a parked page so unlikely to be them: tangerING.com (my emphasis).
Jason says
Tangering makes more sense , or that could be a new word for the action of banking with them , ” I’m tangering ” right now be quiet “
M Scott says
And what was the value of the tangerine.ca domain?