“Advancing digital expansion” was at the top of Western Union’s overview of strategic initiatives in the company’s 3Q18 earnings report, released Thursday.
At more than 165 years old, the global money transfer company has hardly cultivated a reputation for innovation, yet 2018 has been a busy year in exactly that department.
In October, the company announced a collaboration with Amazon to allow international e-commerce customers in select countries to pay in person for online purchases through the Western Union network.
“This will provide access to online shopping for millions of potential Amazon customers who will be able to shop global and pay local,” president and CEO Hikmet Ersek said during the company’s earnings call Thursday. “It was just one example of how we are leveraging our unique global platform in new ways, bringing value to partners through our technology stack, API, settlement engine and compliance infrastructure.”
“We are ready to go and we are testing and we have some real transactions starting,” he said. “We’ll leave it to Amazon to announce that to their customers.”
Asked about competition from Walmart2World, a global money transfer service Walmart launched this year with MoneyGram International, Ersek said Western Union hadn’t seen “any significant impact” on its U.S. outbound business.
“U.S. outbound to Mexico business is growing and I think we are very well-positioned in the U.S.,” he said. “Also, our U.S. outbound digital business, westernunion.com business is showing good results.”
The company also announced in September it was teaming up with Denver, Colo.-based fintech accelerator Techstars to revamp cross-border and cross-currency money movement, whether that means making the process easier, faster, cheaper, or all of the above.
According to Techstars’s website, the accelerator program, whose application period opens Dec. 3, “will help entrepreneurs create innovative solutions to some of the industry’s latest challenges including ML/AI, crypto and blockchain technologies, analytics and omnichannel platforms while leveraging the creative and agile thinking of some of the fintech industries brightest minds.”
Jeff Hochstadt, chief strategy and development officer at Western Union, previously told Bank Innovation the company will also be exploring areas like digital wallets, point-of-sale solutions, mobile payments, and digital identity.
While Western Union’s year-over-year revenue declined 1%, or increased 3% on a constant currency basis, revenue from westernunion.com’s money transfer service increased 19%. Website revenues grew, as a percentage of the company’s overall customer-to-customer business, to 12%.
“Third quarter results were solid, driven by continued double-digit revenue growth from westernunion.com and strong profitability,” Ersek in a statement accompanying the earnings report. “Strategically, we made good progress on key initiatives, including advancing our digital expansion efforts and adding new cross-border payments opportunities.”






