Western Union May Soon Expand Services as Virtual Currency Exchange, Details Here

Western Union is an established facilitator of cross-border remittance services.

Written by Radhika Parashar, Edited by Siddharth Suvarna | Updated: 26 October 2022 12:57 IST

Western Union May Soon Expand Services as Virtual Currency Exchange, Details Here

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Owing to the intrigue around crypto sector, Western Union’s indulgence does not seem surprising

Highlights

It could be months before Western Union gets its approvals
Western Union has dabbled in the crypto sector in 2015 also
Trademark attorney Mike Kondoudis shared Western Union’s plans

Western Union is looking to expand into the virtual digital assets sector in the coming days. The money transfer service provider has filed for a bunch of trademarks in the US, seeking approvals to provide exchange and transfer services for virtual currencies. Western Union is an established facilitator of cross-border remittance services. In recent times, however, complaints about the platform charging really hefty fees for its services had dragged the platform under bad light.

Western Union has shared three trademark applications, attorney Mike Kondoudis shared on Twitter.

The platform is also planning to offer crypto trading services whenever it revamps.

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#WesternUnion has filed 3 trademark applications claiming plans for
:arrow_forward: Financial + Banking + Insurance
:arrow_forward: Virtual currency exchange + transfer
:arrow_forward: Commodity and Crypto trading + brokerage
:arrow_forward: Issuing tokens of value
…and much more#Web3 #Metaverse #Cryptocurrency #NFT #DeFi pic.twitter.com/YvKysvj3mq
— Mike Kondoudis (@KondoudisLaw) October 25, 2022

Back in October last year, Lord Fusitu, a parliamentarian in the Polynesian country of Tonga had criticised Western Union as a provider of traditional remittance transfers.

At the time, he had said that Western Union chugs down 30 percent of the remittances that must reach Tonga from its diaspora working in foreign countries.

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“Our GDP in 2020 was $510 million (roughly Rs. 3828.8 crores), so 30 percent of that or $60 million (roughly Rs. 450 crores) is fees alone to Western Union,” the parliamentarian had said, while pushing for legalising cryptocurrencies.

Since cryptocurrencies are largely unregulated and provide instant cross-border money transfers, several remittance-depended nations have backed their usage over conventional money transfers like Western Union.

El Salvador, a central American country that relies its economy from its diaspora living abroad, became the first nation in the world to legalise Bitcoin as a legal tender last September.

Owing to the intrigue around the crypto sector, Western Union's indulgence in the crypto sector does not seem surprising.

This is not the first time, however, that Western Union has shown an inclination towards the crypto sector.

In 2015, Western Union teamed-up with Ripple to settle payments of remittances. The partnership stayed in its test phase and three years later Western Union announced that it had decided not to expand as a crypto transfer provider.

Despite the delay in providing crypto services, Western Union continued to be in terms with crypto wallet service providers. It partnered Coins.ph blockchain platform, for instance, to boost its services in the Philippines.

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Further reading: Cryptocurrency, Western Union

Radhika Parashar

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Radhika Parashar is a senior correspondent for Gadgets 360. She has been reporting on tech and telecom for the last three years now and will be focussing on writing about all things crypto. Besides this, she is a major sitcom nerd and often replies in Chandler Bing and Michael Scott references. For tips or queries you could reach out to her at RadhikaP@ndtv.com. More