Western Union

Former U.S. telegraph company and contemporary provider of electronic financial transactions. From its foundation in 1851 as a company formed to build a telegraph line from Buffalo, N.Y., to St. Louis, Mo., in 1856 the expanding business was reorganized as the Western Union Telegraph Co. By the end of 1861 Western Union had built the first transcontinental telegraph line. The company introduced singing telegrams in 1933. Western Union continued to grow, absorbing competitors such as Postal Telegraph Inc. in 1943. As telegraphy was superseded by other methods of telecommunication, Western Union diversified into teletypewriter services, money orders, and mailgrams. It launched the telecommunications satellite Westar 1 in 1974 and was operating five satellites by 1982. In 1988 the company was reorganized as Western Union Corp. to handle money transfers and related services. After declaring bankruptcy in 1993, it sold its financial services arm in 1994 to First Financial Management Corp., and in 1995 that company merged with First Data Corp. The renamed Western Union Financial Services, Inc., became a world leader in electronic (including Internet) transactions.

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The Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. Its North American headquarters is at Englewood, 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 September 9, 2008, the company has 350,000 Western Union agent locations in over 240 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 is 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.

In 1987, Investor Bennett S. LeBow acquired Western Union.

The official name of the corporation was changed to New Valley Corporation in 1991, just in time for that entity to seek bankruptcy protection. The name change was taken to shield the Western Union name from being dragged through the proceedings (and the bad PR that would cause).. Under the leadership of LeBow and COO Howard Lorber, the company's stock price rose from $1 to $240 a share in three years .

New Valley 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 New Valley Corporation's bankruptcy.

The spin off was completed in September and Western Union is now an independent, publicly traded company.

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 February 2006, The Western Union website showed this notice:

"Effective 2006-01-27, 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 have any questions or concerns, please contact a customer service representative. "

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 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:

• common carrier terrestrial microwave networks,
• long distance telephone service
• landline-based leased voice and data communication circuits
• cellular phone service for a very short time in the early 1980s (the phones were made by 2-way radio manufacturer E.F. Johnson Company)
• early messaging networks such as TWX, which was acquired from AT&T (the founder of the TWX network) and renamed Telex II by Western Union, and Telex.

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.

Can be used as money laundering tool

Western Union always advises its customers not to send money to someone that they have never met in person. Despite its efforts in increasing customers' awareness of the issue, Western Union is sometimes used for internet fraud by scammers. Western Union has been required to maintain records of pay-out locations to the criminals who launder the money but this information may only be obtained through the use of a subpoena. Hence advance-fee fraud and romance scammers continue to receive funds via Western Union confident in the knowledge that money lost to overseas scammers is almost always unrecoverable.

It is for this reason it is banned as a medium of payment through eBay.

Connection to Military Intelligence

There are allegations that Western Union provided US 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 involvement with the War on Terror. In practice, this has meant denying service to senders who specify recipients with Arabic-sounding names. Transactions which do not involve persons with such names will 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 fail and 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. 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 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.

See also

• 60 Hudson Street - Former headquarters
• Jay Gould - owned a controlling interest in the late 1800s
• Pangram - The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Used by WU to test teleprinters.
• Pennsylvania v. New York — Question before the U.S. Supreme Court: when Western Union Money orders are supposed to escheat to the state if not fully redeemed, what state is to get the money?

References

External links

• Western Union corporate website
• Western Union Locations
• Company history 1851–2001
• Western Union Telegram Collection (MUM00472) owned by the University of Mississippi
• Remittances to the Rescue? from Dollars & Sense (see sidebar for article on Western Union)