Western Union Says New Platform Strategy To Drive Growth, Higher Margins

Western Union Company is meeting with investors and analysts about strategy updates and its three-year financial outlook, the company said in a press release on Tuesday (Sept. 24).

Aside from announcing platform innovations at Western Union’s Investor Day on Tuesday (Sept. 24), the company will also release its three-year financial forecast. The company anticipates making more than $3 billion in operating cash flow over 2020 to 2022.

“Our resilient business gave us the opportunity to develop the long-term vision and three-year financial targets we’re unveiling today,” said Western Union CEO Hikmet Ersek. “Going forward, we expect to drive additional profitable growth for shareholders and more value to customers through new products, expanded service offerings and partnerships that leverage our industry-leading capabilities, powered by a unique cross-border platform of unmatched global scale.”

The new strategy aims to address the growing demand for fast and secure cross-border transfers and payments. 

“The targets we have announced today build on our proven strong foundation and financial profile,” said CFO Raj Agrawal. “This foundation gives us the power to invest in our cross-border platform capabilities while continuing to return significant levels of capital to shareholders.”

Western Union’s platform strategy is intended to capitalize on existing assets. Planned are new partnerships with emerging markets, extended cross-border services and new products.

The company announced on Monday (Sept. 23) that it has expanded its real-time global payments capabilities to include real-time account-to-account transfers to an account or a mobile wallet for select banks or digital wallet providers in 17 countries.

Receivers will have funds available to spend within minutes, enabling new real-time, cross-border, cross-currency payments capabilities for C2C, B2C and B2B use cases.

Launch countries include Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, China, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Uganda. Ersek said 100 additional countries are being evaluated for enablement of real-time payment capability by the end of 2020.