Western Union expands global network for real-time payments

Western Union has announced a continued expansion of its global network for real-time money-movement and payments.

Now, Western Union customers have the choice of moving funds globally with speed, with the company’s expanded capability to send cross-border, cross-currency money transfers and payments real-time to 50 countries when paid into select banks and digital wallets. The expansion has been fast-tracked since the beginning of this year with the goal of assessing as many as 100 countries for real-time capabilities by the end of 2020. Western Union’s global network now includes more than four billion bank account and wallets.

Western Union’s expansion of digital pay-in and pay-out has become an especially critical capability as people around the world continue sending money to their loved ones and making business payments during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the crisis, Western Union has focused on accelerating the expansion of its digital money transfer capabilities so more consumers and business can make essential cross-border payments and transfers from the safety of their homes.

Western Union’s consumer-to-consumer money in-minutes cross-border payments capability is now active when sending to select banks or digital wallet providers in 50 countries: Austria, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, China, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Denmark, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Italy, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malawi, Mexico, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nepal, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Portugal, Rwanda, Senegal, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The company also offers banks and other payment providers a portfolio of application programming interfaces (APIs) to integrate with its cross-border, cross-current money movement platform with the benefit of Western Union’s treasury management, reconciliation, and global compliance capabilities.