Western Union
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For other uses, see Western Union (disambiguation).
| The Western Union Company
<tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align:center; padding:16px 0 16px 0;">Image:Western Union money transfer.png</td></tr> | |
| Type | Public: NYSE: WU |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1851 (current incarnation launched 2006) |
| Headquarters | Greenwood Village, Colorado
<tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Industry</th><td>Financial services</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Products</th><td>Financial services</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Revenue</th><td>Image:Green Arrow Up.svg$3 billion USD (2005)</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Website</th><td>www.westernunion.com</td></tr> |
The Western Union Company (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.
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[edit] History
Western Union was founded in Rochester, New York in 1851 as The New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company.
After a series of acquisitions of competing companies by Hiram Sibley & Don Alonzo Watson the company changed its name to Western Union Telegraph Company in 1856 at the insistence of Ezra Cornell, one of the founders of Cornell University <ref>Ezra Cornell: A 19th Century Life – From the Cornell University Library Archives</ref>, to signify the joining of telegraph lines from coast to coast.
Western Union completed the first transcontinental telegraph line in 1861. In 1865 it formed the Russian American Telegraph in an attempt to link America to Europe, via Alaska, into Siberia, to Moscow.
It introduced the first stock ticker in 1866, and a standardized time service in 1870. The next year, 1871, the company introduced its money transfer service, based on its extensive telegraph network. As the telephone replaced the telegraph, money transfer would become its primary business. WU's attempt to take over the telephone business failed due to losing the Elisha Gray cases for the invention of the telephone.
When the Dow Jones Transportation Average stock market index for the NYSE was created in 1884, Western Union was one of the original eleven companies tracked.
In 1914 Western Union offered the first charge card for consumers; in 1923 it introduced teletypewriters to interconnect its offices. Singing telegrams followed in 1933, intercity Telefax in 1935, and commercial intercity microwave communications in 1943. After the war, Western Union developed Deskfax, a smaller version of Telefax designed to be used from an office desk. In 1958 it began offering Telex to customers. In 1964, Western Union initiated a transcontinental microwave beam system to replace land lines.
Western Union became the first American telecommunications corporation to maintain its own fleet of geosynchronous communication satellites, starting in 1974. The fleet of satellites, called Westar, carried communications within the Western Union company for telegram and mailgram message data to Western Union bureaus nationwide. It also handled traffic for its Telex and TWX (Telex II) services. The Westar satellites' transponders were also leased by other companies for relaying video, voice, data, and facsimile(fax) transmissions.
Due to declining profits and mounting debts, Western Union slowly began to divest itself of telecommunications-based assets starting in the early 1980s. Due to deregulation at the time, Western Union began sending money outside the country, re-inventing itself as "The fastest way to send money worldwideSM" and expanding its agent locations internationally.
In 1986, Western Union and GTE became owners of Airfone.
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<ref>Notice of the discontinuation of telegram services – From the Western Union website</ref>, 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.
Western Union's spin off from First Data Corp. was completed on September 29, 2006. Western Union began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol WU on October 4, 2006.
[edit] Internet precursors
Western Union was involved in the Automatic Digital Network (AUTODIN) program. AUTODIN, a military application for communication, was first developed in the 1960s and became the precursor to the modern internet in the 1990s. The Defense Message System (DMS) replaced AUTODIN in 2000.
A related innovation that came from AUTODIN was Western Union's computer based EasyLink service. This service was developed for business application. This system allowed for one of the first marketable electronic mail systems for non-government users. In addition, the system allowed the same message to be sent simultaneously to multiple recipients via email, fax, mailgram, or telex services; as well as receive messages from the integrated formats. With the service, users could also perform research utilizing its InfoLink application. EasyLink is now its own company.
[edit] Bidpay
As the Internet became an arena for commerce at the turn of the millennium, Western Union started its online services. Money transfers can now be sent online from an ever-growing list of countries, and cash can be picked up at the thousands of Western Union agent locations around the world.
The BidPay service was also created, letting consumers pay for auction wins at sites such as eBay; the service provided a way to pay by credit card and deliver the payment as a money order to the recipient. BidPay was renamed "Western Union Auction Payments" in 2004 before being renamed back to BidPay. BidPay ceased operations on 31 December 2005 and was purchased for USD$1.8 million in March 2006 by CyberSource Corp. who announced their intention to re-launch BidPay.
Many online buyers are reluctant to pay via Western Union, as their transferring methods leave users open to scams[citation needed]. Mostly operating from Eastern Europe, scammers will attempt to get money from accounts by soliciting account numbers or names, claiming to want them for mutual security.[citation needed]
[edit] Other service offerings
Along with satellite telecommunications, Western Union was also quite active in other forms of telecommunication services:
- common carrier terrestrial microwave networks,
- long distance telephone service
- landline-based leased voice and data communication circuits
- cellular phone service for a very short time in the early 1980s (the phones were made by 2-way radio manufacturer E.F. Johnson Company)
- early messaging networks such as TWX, which was acquired from AT&T (the founder of the TWX network) and renamed Telex II by Western Union, and Telex.
[edit] Sponsorship
Western Union was a major Jersey sponsor of the Sydney Roosters NRL team from 2002-2003. The company still sponsors the team, but not as a jersey sponsor. Around the world, Western Union sponsors numerous community events that help support the diaspora communities that use the global Money Transfer service.
The First Data Western Union Foundation donates money to worthy causes around the world. After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the Foundation donated $1,000,000 US dollars to the relief effort.
[edit] End of telegrams
As of July 2006, The Western Union website showed this notice:
- "Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact a customer service representative." [1]
This ended the era of telegrams which began in 1851 with the founding of the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company, and which spanned 155 years of continuous service. Western Union reported that telegrams sent had fallen to a total of 20,000 a year, due to competition from other communication services such as email. Employees had been informed of the decision in mid-January.
Telegram service in the United States and Canada is still available, operated by International Telegram.
[edit] Popular money laundering tool and fraud
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. Unfortunately, and despite its efforts in increasing customers' awareness of the issue, Western Union provides one of the most popular services for internet fraud from Nigerian and Philippine 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, fake "webshops" and romance scammers continue to receive funds via Western Union confident in the knowledge that money lost to Nigerian or Philippine scammers through Western Union is almost always unrecoverable.
[edit] See also
- MoneyGram - a competitor in the money transfer business
- Jay Gould - owned a controlling interest in the late 1800's
[edit] References
<references />
[edit] External links
es:Western Union fr:Western Union it:Western Union ja:ウエスタンユニオン zh:西联汇款
Categories: Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange | Articles lacking sources from November 2006 | All articles lacking sources | Articles with unsourced statements | Companies based in Colorado | Companies established in 1851 | Financial services companies of the United States | NASCAR sponsors | S&P 500 | Telecommunications companies of the United States | Telecommunications history
