One of the world’s leading non-bank money transmission companies, Western Union shows it immense confidence over a brighter future of cryptocurrency as a means of worldwide money transmission in a Blog Article.
“Cryptocurrency might become one more option for a way for assets to be exchanged between people and countries. If that happens, we would be ready to launch.”
Almeida stresses that the purpose of cryptocurrencies and its underlying blockchain technology should be looked upon as separates. The Western Union team adds that albeit interesting blockchain technologies does not have a use case for their firm as they have been sending P2P money electronically for several years.
There are two elements to the cryptocurrency. The first one is the digital currency itself and the second one is the technology behind it: blockchain …
But Almeida adds that it wouldn’t be a big reach for WU to add a cryptocurrency to its customer options right now because we’ve already been transferring money digitally for two decades.
There's a lot of hype around cryptocurrencies.
Good thing we've been transferring money digitally for nearly two decades. Bring on the #blockchain: https://t.co/Z1fzoH2ujV #WUFintech pic.twitter.com/DFUVYq9vOi
— Western Union (@WesternUnion) December 17, 2018
Rumors that Western Union is exploring the use cases of blockchain by employing Ripple has been making the rounds for some time. The Western Union Chief Executive Officer Hikmet Ersek said in a conference call with Bloomberg:
We are looking especially in the processing settlement and working capital optimization, also in the regulation part, on the compliance part on the blockchain capabilities … And we do test; we do have some tests with Ripple.
Although the firm is not 100% happy with the result, Ersek said in statements to Fortune, that he did not see a significant advantage in replacing their current system with one that is based on Ripple.
“We are always criticized that Western Union is not cost-efficient, blah blah blah, but we did not see that part of the efficiency yet during our tests … The practical matter is it’s still too expensive.”
Whether Western Union will delve into the cryptocurrency and blockchain realm is a matter to be seen, observing the growth in adoption that day might not be very far.
Read more: Big News: Facebook Is Developing A Cryptocurrency For Whatsapp Transfers, Targeting Indian Markets
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