The official position of Western Union about cryptos has changed a lot recently. In the last few months, the company is considerably more open to cryptos and the blockchain than it was before. CEO Hikmet Ersek affirmed in June that the company would not add crypto solutions so soon. Now, the company is following the will of the consumers and it is ready to add them if they are needed.
According to Odilon Almeida, the president of Western Union Global Money Transfer, the company is “ready to adopt any kind of currency.” And interestingly, this includes cryptocurrencies. In his case, he felt that until people were paying “hospital bills in cryptos,” Western Union would not add a cryptocurrency transfer solution to its services, according to cryptocurrencynews.com.
Western Union Ready to Adopt
Odilon Almeida held an interview with Reuters Plus. Here he stated that there was no big difference between cryptocurrencies and regular digital payments, of which the Western Union has handled for years now.
The president stated further: “We already operate with 130 currencies. If one day we feel like it is the right strategy to introduce cryptocurrencies to our platform, technology-wise, it’s just one more currency. I think cryptocurrencies may become one more option of currency or assets around the globe to be exchanged between people and businesses. If that happens, we would be ready to launch.”
This is a case of age and experience giving Western Union the potential to launch any type of currency inclusive of those based on the blockchain.
Volatility
It’s a word that is synonymous with the crypto industry and in this case, it is no different. Volatility is one major problem that the industry needs to sort out first before Western Union could involve itself. The crypto market also needs to take control of governance and compliance.
However, price volatility can be addressed by pegging coins to “strong currencies, such as the dollar,” says Almeida.
In this instance, stablecoins would be a necessity.
Blockchain
The company has already begun exploring blockchain. It has partnered with Ripple to “test whether sending payments by blockchain was faster and less expensive.” The partnership was made to turn the company into something more cost-efficient.
However, the company did not find the results of the partnership to be too satisfactory. According to the spokesman of the Western Union, they did not save too much money by using the process.
The senior vice president of product for Ripple, Asheesh Birla, affirmed that the company only made like 10 transactions and stopped and that the cost saving would come from actually using the technology to scale the transactions and make them more efficient.
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
