While building digital, WU did not abandon the 500,000 agents. In 2016, they introduced "Send to a Bank Account" from a cash agent. A migrant worker could walk into a CVS in New York, hand over cash, and have it land in their mother’s bank account in Guadalajara within 30 minutes. Fintechs couldn’t touch that hybrid model.
Blockchain was a solution looking for a problem that Western Union had already solved with old-fashioned ledgers. c2016 western union
The "c.2016" era marked the moment management realized that digital wasn't a side project; it was the future. While building digital, WU did not abandon the
Behind the scenes, however, Western Union was experimenting. Leaked reports from 2016 suggest the company ran a pilot project integrating XRP (Ripple’s token) for settlement between dollar and peso corridors. They found that while settlement was fast, the volatility and regulatory uncertainty made it useless for the average remitter sending $200 to feed a family. Fintechs couldn’t touch that hybrid model
In December 2016, Western Union received a notice of investigation from FinCEN . By January 2017, the company agreed to pay $586 million to settle charges of willfully failing to maintain an effective AML program and aiding and abetting wire fraud.
In a surprising twist, Western Union realized that "unbanked" recipients still had banked senders. In 2016, they slashed fees for transfers going directly to bank accounts in key corridors (Mexico, Philippines, China). They undercut TransferWise on speed in specific lanes, noting that while TransferWise took 2-3 days for a bank transfer, Western Union could do it in minutes via their stored balance network.