Everything about Western Union totally explained
» For other uses, see Western Union (disambiguation).
The Western Union Company is a financial services and communications
company based in the
United States. Its North American headquarters is at
Meridian, 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 $5 billion annually.
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 and 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, 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.
The telegraph was dominated by Western Union, an industrialized monopoly. They were the first communications empire and the beginning of what was to come for the future of communications as it's known today.
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. In 1879, Western Union left the telephone business, having lost a
patent lawsuit with Bell. As the
telephone replaced the telegraph, money transfer would become its primary business.
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 join its branches.
Singing telegrams followed in
1933, intercity
fax in
1935, and commercial intercity
microwave communications in
1943. In
1958 it began offering
Telex to customers. Western Union introduced the 'Candygram' in the 1960s, a box of chocolates accompanying a telegram featured in a commercial with the rotund
Don Wilson. In
1964, Western Union initiated a transcontinental microwave beam 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 worldwide
SM" and expanding its agent locations internationally.
In the
1980s Western Union organized its cable systems properties and its right-of-way rights of its telegraph lines into a subsidiary called Western Union International. In
1990 it sold this subsidiary to
MCI Communications which renamed it to MCI International and moved its headquarters from
New York City to
Westchester County,
New York.
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, 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
cable 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.
On September 10, 2007, Los Angeles area immigrant and community organizations joined the Transnational Institute for Grassroots Research and Action (TIGRA) to launch a nationwide boycott against Western Union. This boycott was scheduled two days before a general consumer boycott by immigrants. Groups accuse Western Union of charging exorbitant fees while failing to adequately reinvest in immigrant communities. The community organizations demand that Western Union abandon its "predatory financial practices" or face an ongoing boycott.
Immigrant advocates called for Western Union to adopt a Transnational Community Benefits Agreement (TCBA). According to the advocacy group, the agreement would "lower remittance fees, establish fairer exchange rates, and provide for community reinvestment." According to the advocacy group, Western Union and other money transfer agencies often function as the primary banking service in immigrant communities through check cashing services, yet they remain unregulated by the Community Reinvestment Act and are unaccountable to their primarily low-wage customer base.
Involvement in early computer networking
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.
AUTODIN was an extremely primitive service that used mechanical
punchcard readers and tab machines to send and receive data over
leased lines. Western Union failed in its attempts to engineer a replacement (AUTODIN II), leading to the development of an acceptable packet-switched network by
BBN (the developer of the
ARPANET) which became the foundation of today's Internet. AUTODIN service ceased in 2000, years after it had become obsolete.
A related innovation that came from AUTODIN was Western Union's computer based
EasyLink service. This system allowed for one of the first marketable
email 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 Services is now its own company.
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've any questions or concerns, please contact a customer service representative. " (External Link
)
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
iTelegram and other companies.
Specific Services
Online
The domain
westernunion.com attracted at least 8.7 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a
Compete.com study.
BidPay
As the
Internet became an arena for commerce at the turn of the millennium, Western Union started its online services. 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. BidPay was later discontinued by CyberSource effective December 31, 2007.
Western Union Mobile
In October of 2007 Western Union announced plans to introduce a mobile money transfer service with the
GSM Association, a global trade association representing more than 700 mobile operators in 218 countries and covering 2.5 billion mobile subscribers.
The proliferation of mobile phones in developed and developing economies provides a widely accessible consumer device capable of delivering mobile financial services ranging from text notifications associated with Western Union cash delivery services to phone-based remittance options. Western Union's mobile money transfer service offering will connect its core money transfer platform to m-bank or m-wallet platforms provided by mobile operators and / or locally regulated financial institutions.
Other service offerings
Along with satellite telecommunications, Western Union was also active in other forms of telecommunication services:
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 charitable causes around the world. After the
2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the Foundation donated US$1,000,000 to the relief effort.
Connection to Military Intelligence
There are documented cases of Western Union providing
US (and then, by proxy,
Israeli) military intelligence with personal information.
Blocked transactions
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 don't 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.
Popular culture
Samuel Goldwyn famously said, “Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union.”
The company, famous for telegrams, was often parodied in cartoons (External Link) by using a comical version of the company name anytime a character received a telegram. Examples include "Western Onion" in The Impatient Patient (1942); "Western Bunions" in Buckaroo Bugs (1944) and Rabbit Transit (1947); and "Eastern Onion" in Homeless Hare (1950).
The band Five Americans recorded a song called "Western Union", which peaked at Number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the spring of 1967. The song concerns a "Dear John" telegram sent to the singer by his girlfriend. The chorus consists of rhythmic "da-da, da-da, da" sounds, mimicking the sounds of telegraphic "dots and dashes".
In Back to the Future Part II, when Doc is accidentally sent back to 1885 leaving himself stranded there and Marty stranded in 1955, Doc writes a letter to Marty and asks Western Union to deliver the letter to Marty in the year 1955 at the exact location Marty was standing when the time machine was sent back to 1885. The letter contains instructions allowing the time machine to be repaired and taken home to Marty's own time of 1985.
In the 1983 film A Christmas Story, Mr. Parker won a leg lamp from being mentioned in the Western Union telegram.
In the Mobb Deep song 'Temperature's Rising', Havoc raps 'I know you need loot, so I send it through Western Union', as he talks about a friend on the run.Further Information
Get more info on 'Western Union'.
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