Business Wire

CO-WESTERN-UNION

Share
Western Union Wins FinTech Breakthrough Award for “Consumer Payments Innovation”

The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU), a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments, today was named winner of the “Consumer Payments Innovation Award” in the fifth annual FinTech Breakthrough Awards for 2021. The company’s innovative cross-border money transfer solution was awarded for its ‘plug and play’ technology used by a growing number of financial institutions to offer seamless, convenient, reliable, and fast international money transfer capabilities for their customers, connecting them to more than 200 countries and territories and over 130 currencies.

Western Union’s White Label Digital Partner technology solution enables FIs to use their existing branded customer technological interface to provide international money transfer services. FI’s customers can fund the transfers drawing from their linked bank accounts, wallets, or cards and choose to pay their receivers through the world’s widest-reaching networks, operated by Western Union, accessing billions of bank accounts, millions of digital wallets, and cards, and over half a million retail locations.

The FinTech Breakthrough Awards is the premier awards program founded to recognize the FinTech innovators, leaders, and visionaries worldwide in various categories, including Digital Banking, Personal Finance, Lending, Payments, Investments, RegTech, InsurTech, and many more. The 2021 FinTech Breakthrough Award program attracted more than 3,850 nominations from across the world.

“Western Union continues to deliver stellar customer experiences for consumers and businesses, moving money around the world every day, simplifying international money transfer complexities, including compliance, regulatory control, and settlement in over 130 currencies. Western Union has taken decades of innovation in serving its own branded customers and is now offering this functionality in a breakthrough white-label arrangement, driving even more cross-border connections for the wider financial sector,” said James Johnson, Managing Director, FinTech Breakthrough.

FinTech Breakthrough Awards perform the most in-depth evaluation of the sector to recognize the creativity, hard work, and success of innovative FinTech companies, technologies, and products worldwide.

“We are thrilled with the 2021 FinTech Breakthrough Award win and are honored with the recognition for our innovative cross-border money movement ‘plug and play’ capability, offered white label or branded as a part of our Digital Partner technology solution,” said Western Union President of Global Network, Jean Claude Farah.

Farah continued, “FI customers can initiate transactions from their bank website or mobile app and send directly to beneficiaries’ bank accounts, mobile wallets, cards, or for in-person cash pickup throughout Western Union’s leading global financial network bridging more than 200 countries and territories and over 130 currencies. With our Western Union Digital Partner technology solution, FIs can count on us to handle the cross-border payout of transactions seamlessly, in minutes, at scale, and in compliance with national and international regulations.”

The opening of Western Union’s cross-border platform and global financial network to third parties marks a strategic step to evolve Western Union to a diversified payments company, accessing adjacent cross-border money movement segments, and adding incremental customers.

FIs and the customers they serve no longer need to be confined to expensive, unpredictable, traditional cross-border payment channels. Western Union’s solution keeps the customer experience firmly in the hands of the FI - from the user interface to branding to pricing - while Western Union takes care of the complexities of the cross-border payout to the beneficiary. Additionally, Western Union’s robust compliance and risk ecosystem supports partners with sanctions and interdiction screening, and real-time risk assessment to detect and prevent fraud while also meeting local regulatory requirements for payouts.

About Western Union
The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU) is a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments. Western Union’s platform provides seamless cross-border flows, and its leading global financial network bridges more than 200 countries and territories and over 130 currencies. We connect businesses, financial institutions, governments, and consumers through one of the world’s widest-reaching networks, accessing billions of bank accounts, millions of digital wallets and cards, and over half a million retail locations. Western Union connects the world to bring boundless possibilities within reach. For more information, visit www.westernunion.com .

About FinTech Breakthrough
Part of Tech Breakthrough , a leading market intelligence and recognition platform for technology innovation and leadership around the globe, the FinTech Breakthrough Awards program is devoted to honoring excellence in Financial Technologies and Services companies and products. The FinTech Breakthrough Awards provide public recognition for the achievements of FinTech companies and products in categories including Payments, Personal Finance, Wealth Management, Fraud Protection, Banking, Lending, RegTech, InsurTech, and more. For more information, visit FinTechBreakthrough.com .

WU-G

Link:

ClickThru

About Business Wire

Business Wire
Business Wire
101 California Street, 20th Floor
CA 94111 San Francisco

http://businesswire.com

Subscribe to releases from Business Wire

Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Latest releases from Business Wire

Ant Group’s AI Health Service AQ Upgrades PC Platform with DeepSearch for Evidence-Based Clinical Decision Support21.1.2026 04:12:00 CET | Press release

Ant Group today announced a major upgrade to the PC platform of its AI-native health assistant, AQ, introducing DeepSearch for clinicians, a new capability designed to support evidence-based clinical decision-making. The service is available free of charge to clinicians and medical students. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260120591991/en/ AQ’s PC platform provides medical professionals with two core capabilities: Health Q&A and DeepSearch. It supports medical literature search, clinical practice, and research, helping reduce clinicians’ day-to-day workload while improving access to high-quality medical information. To ensure accuracy and reliability, AQ rigorously curates its sources based on recognized levels of evidence. The platform integrates more than 36 million high-quality Chinese and international medical publications, making its clinical decision support closely aligned with real-world practice. Deep

NIKE, Inc. Announces New Geography Leadership Appointments20.1.2026 22:15:00 CET | Press release

NIKE, Inc. (NYSE: NKE) today shared the following note with teammates regarding changes to its Senior Leadership Team: This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260120575539/en/ César Garcia, VP/GM Nike Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) To: Lst-Global From: EHill Subject: Leadership Announcements Team, In recent months, the Senior Leadership Team has benefited from having our Geography VP/GMs at the table helping us move faster and bringing us closer to athletes* in both countries and marketplaces around the world. As we continue to drive our Win Now actions and stand up our Sport Offense, I’d like to share several important leadership changes across three of our Geo VP/GM roles. EMEA Carl Grebert, a true legend on our team, has decided to retire after nearly 30 years of service and leadership across global, country and geography roles across the company. Carl shared his thinking with me some time ago, and I’m deepl

Xsolla Expands Payment Coverage in Portugal With MB Way, a Leading Mobile Wallet Trusted by 6 Million Customers, to Unlock New Growth Opportunities for Game Developers20.1.2026 16:41:00 CET | Press release

Empowering Portuguese players with Seamless, Localized Payment Options for a Smoother and More Trusted Gaming Experience Xsolla, a global video game commerce company that helps developers launch, grow, and monetize their games, today announced the expansion of its payments solution in Portugal with the addition of MB Way. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260120938007/en/ Graphic: Xsolla Portugal is a leader in digital transformation, with nearly 90% of its population online, high smartphone usage, and a strong adoption of mobile banking. Trusted by 6 million people, connected to 11 million cards, supported by 28 banks, and driving 496 million transactions in 2024, MB Way provides 95% market coverage, allowing most bank customers to use the service. MB Way is the leading mobile wallet in Portugal, with an estimated market share of 34%-45% of all e-commerce transactions locally. By adding MB Way as a payment meth

Balena Secures Strategic Growth Investment to Accelerate Edge AI and IoT Fleet Management20.1.2026 15:14:00 CET | Press release

New partnership fuels product innovation and reinforces Balena’s position as the leading hardware-agnostic platform dedicated to the security and long-term stability of device fleets Balena, the leading platform for deploying, managing, and scaling fleets of edge computing and AI devices, today announced a strategic growth investment from LoneTree Capital (“LoneTree”), a New York-based growth capital firm. The partnership will accelerate Balena’s product innovation with a focus on Edge AI workloads and security features to meet evolving compliance needs, while expanding resources for customer success and global fleet support. Founded in 2011, Balena enables customers to leverage the ever-increasing power of technology to solve real-world problems by providing software to manage the full lifecycle of edge computing devices. The platform abstracts away infrastructure complexity, handling critical tasks like secure Over-The-Air (OTA) updates so engineering teams can focus on their core pr

SIRBAI Launches Middle East’s First AI-Powered Autonomous Drone Swarm Technology at UMEX 202620.1.2026 15:11:00 CET | Press release

New platform enables coordinated, autonomous drone operations designed for modern defense environments SIRBAI today announced the official launch of the Middle East’s first AI-powered autonomous drone swarm technology at UMEX 2026 - a global exhibition platform for unmanned systems and autonomous capabilities - marking the company’s entry into the defense technology sector. Designed for unmanned aerial systems (UAS), the platform enables multiple drones to operate collaboratively with a high degree of autonomy, even in complex and contested environments. As the first company in the region to offer this advanced capability, SIRBAI is set to redefine the modern battlefield with innovative and scalable autonomous technology, establishing new standards for resilient and operator-friendly mission systems for modern defense operations. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260120186459/en/ SIRBAI Launches Middle East’s Fi

In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.

Visit our pressroom
World GlobeA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.HiddenA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.Eye