A French bank BNP Paribas has launched a site in a dot-brand .BNPPARIBAS gTLD. The domain was registered in January, 2015, and BNP Paribas began a PR campaign in April, which purpose involved informing public about a forthcoming transition. Thus, special focus was on safety of using a new domain.
At the moment visitors, switching to former sites in the.FR and .NET domains, are directed to a landing page that informs them that a full-function BNP Paribas site is now available on mabanque.bnpparibas. However, now it concerns only Francophone visitors – the .COM domain is still live, serving Anglophone customers.
BNP Paribas is the fourth-largest bank in terms of managing assets number in the world (about $2,5 trillion), and its transition to a new dot-brand gTLD is certainly a momentous event. However, it is too early to judge about a success of this transition. So, the Chinese conglomerate CITIC dumped its .com for a dot-brand .CITIC last September. But soon it switched back, having been apparently not satisfied with the result.
