admin To make the transfer of funds across borders easier, Western Union has teamed up with Walmart. The Western Union Company’s WU money transfer services are now available at the Walmart Inc. WMT stores. The latter’s customers can now make domestic and international money transfers, bill payments and money orders for sending money globally using the network of the former.
Details on the Collaboration
All 4700 Walmart outlets across the United States will enjoy this easy money transfer facility. Money can be transferred on a real-time basis in more than 200 countries at more than 550,000 Western Union’s retail locations. By collaborating with multiple banking partners, the company has ensured that money can also be sent into billions of bank accounts, wallets or cards across the globe. This will inevitably streamline cross-border transactions.
Benefits Accruing from this Partnership
The latest deal empowers Western Union to expand its money movement and payment service capabilities. It will boost the company’s consumer-to-consumer business. This segment accounts for the chunk of the company’s revenues (87% in 2020) and has been under pressure for some time.Walmart also has an alliance with Western Union’s peer MoneyGram International Inc. MGI. MoneyGram powers the white-label Walmart2World service available at its 4,700 stores. It also provides its digital remittance platform enabling users to initiate and receive funds through mobile and online channels.
Walmart uses Ria Money, a subsidiary of Euronet Worldwide Inc. EEFT, which provides Walmart2Walmart, a domestic money transfer service launched in 2014.Coming back to Western Union’s latest move, it seems to be time opportune as the COVID-19 pandemic emphasized the importance of moving funds across borders on a real-time basis. The pandemic has revealed a necessity to uncover ways of enhancing the efficacy of this transaction process. To this end, Western Union collaborated with several financial institutions worldwide to manage international payments better. The company extended its 35-year relationship with Kroger in October 2020 in a bid to benefit the latter’s customers with its expanded suite of domestic and international payment services. The current Walmart collaboration will also help contribute to the same initiative of streamlining international transactions and money transfers.
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