Western Union

Western Union (NYSE: WU) is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. Its North American headquarters are in Greenwood Village, Colorado, and its international marketing and commercial services headquarters are in Montvale, New Jersey. Until it discontinued the service, this company was the best known US company in the business of exchanging telegrams.

Western Union has a number of divisions, with products such as person-to-person money transfer, money orders, and commercial services. As of June 9, 2006, the company has 270,000 Western Union agent locations in over 200 countries and territories. Reported revenues top $3 billion annually.


 

• 1First Data Corporation
• 2Popular money laundering tool
• 3New security policies and customer complaints
• 4References

[top]First Data Corporation

Western Union was bought by First Financial Management Corporation in 1994, which a year later merged with First Data Corporation. On January 26, 2006, First Data Corporation announced plans to spin Western Union off as an independent, publicly traded company. Western Union's focus will remain money transfers. The next day, Western Union announced that it would cease offering telegram transmission and delivery, the product most associated with the company throughout its history. This was, however, not the original Western Union telegram service, but a new service of First Data under the Western Union banner; the original telegram service was discontinued after Western Union Corp.'s bankruptcy.

The spinoff was completed in December and Western Union is now an independent, publicly traded company.

Western Union is also the name of a ship that worked for the same company laying telegraph cable in the Caribbean and South America. She is currently working in Key West, Florida, where she was built and launched. The Western Union is 130 feet long and weighs 91.91 tons and is currently configured as a passenger vessel.

[top]Popular money laundering tool

Western Union always advises its customers not to send money to someone that they have never met in person, especially if that person is in Nigeria. Despite its efforts in increasing customers' awareness of the issue, Western Union provides one of the most popular services for internet fraud from scammers. Western Union has been required to maintain records of pay-out locations to the criminals who launder the money but this information may only be obtained through the use of a subpoena. Often pay-out location information is useless since there are no extradition treaties with Nigeria. Hence 419 and romance scammers continue to receive funds via Western Union confident in the knowledge that money lost to Nigerian scammers through Western Union is almost always unrecoverable.

[top]New security policies and customer complaints

Western Union has begun blocking transactions based on suspicion of terrorist connections, as a part of the company's intimate involvement with the War on Terror. In practice, this has often meant denying service to senders who specify recipients with Arabic-sounding names. Transactions which do not involve persons with such names will sometimes be denied as well, based on criteria which the company refuses to disclose. Currently, transfers sent from the Western Union web site require telephone confirmation of the sender's identity. On occasion, the transfer will inexplicably fail. Western Union's customer service will inform the sender that the transaction "does not meet our requirements." If details are requested, no information other than the fact that their disclosure is forbidden will be given. The total cost of the transaction, however, is still charged to the sender's bank card, to be refunded after several days. Numerous customers have reported this problem.

[top]References

Ezra Cornell: A 19th Century Life – From the Cornell University Library Archives

Notice of the discontinuation of telegram services – From the Western Union website

Western Union Spying Worldwide - Cryptome

William Fisher: Where's My Money, Mohammed? – Scoop Independent News

Ming the Mechanic: Western Union sucks - The NewsLog of Flemming Funch

Western Union corporate website

Western Union Locations




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