Western Union And Viber To Provide Cross-Border Money Transfer Capabilities

By BENJELLOUN Samia

The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU), a leader in global payment services, and Viber, a leading mobile messaging app with 664M+ unique users worldwide, today announced an agreement to offer a fast and simple way to send money to friends and family virtually anywhere in the world from the convenience of the Viber app.

Leveraging the recently released WU® ConnectSM platform, the collaboration between Western Union and Viber will focus on three key areas:

- Send money around the world: In this first release, Viber users in the United States will be able to send up to US$499 for pickup at more than 500,000 Western Union® Agent locations in 200+ countries and territories.

- A user experience for the messaging world: Western Union and Viber have created a money transfer experience that will start and complete within the messaging screen of Viber users.

- Integrated solutions: The solution leverages robust technology, foreign exchange conversion, data management, as well as regulatory, compliance and anti-money laundering infrastructure, to expedite efficient and timely money movement almost anywhere in the world.

“Through this alliance with Viber we continue our positive momentum to increase the numbers of ways to move funds into our global FinTech cross-border platform, expanding our digital omni-channel network,” said Hikmet Ersek, President and CEO, Western Union.