Western Union, a leader in cross-border and cross-currency money movement, announced the expansion of its digital money transfer services, the fastest-growing part of its business in 2019, to over 75 countries, and payout into a global network of four billion accounts and wallets across 100 countries, in addition to a large agent retail network in 200 countries and territories (over 550,000 retail agent locations as of December 31, 2019).
Western Union’s digital money services today is available across every continent of the world. The Company’s digital services purposefully capture all the top 20 of the world’s primary remittance sending countries ranked by the World Bank. Equally, the Company’s global account and wallet payout network covers the world’s major remittance receive countries.
“Western Union’s strong balance sheet and financial position allows us to continue to expand our digital services to more people than ever before, in more parts of the world, including the world’s largest sending and receiving countries, especially during these challenging times,” said Western Union President and CEO Hikmet Ersek.
Ersek said, “We are proud that our digital strategy, prioritized years ago, is enabling real-time digital payments for customers and businesses. Amid the current uncertainty, we are doing everything we can to keep money moving to where it is needed most, across the world.”
Western Union services today:
From approximately 75 countries, customers can send money around the world, check prices and exchange rates, and track their transfers through either westernunion.com or https://www.westernunion.com/us/en/mobile-app.html partner led digital platforms in several countries such as Canada, France, Italy, Russia, South Korea and Saudi Arabia.
Shutdowns related to COVID-19 have impacted some Western Union Retail Agent locations with altered operating hours or closures, globally. At this time, however, customers everywhere are encouraged to use the global Agent Locator tool to be sure of the status and hours of their nearest location, which is updated three times a day.
On March 26, 2020, Western Union announced the launch of a new channel – Digital Location – to enable customers in Austria, Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Oman to connect in multiple languages via a voice or video call to a money transfer personal-service assistant who will help them through the transaction. Customers will electronically complete their transaction funded by cards for payout into Western Union’s Global Network.
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:
