WU's platform provides seamless cross-border flows, and its leading global financial network bridges more than 200 countries and territories and over 130 currencies. 2023Western Union Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved. You have to recognise that youre taking a massive journey as a company because it has always relied on data centres. We saw that our revenue and customer base didnt reflect the opportunity and size of the market.. To explore this content and receive communications from Google, please sign in with an existing Google account. Commenting on the speed comparison of OutSystems compared to previous traditional development, Tom said, "On an earlier project, we had ten people working on a pricing and UX project. How Western Union Became a Global Digital Front-Runner for Cross-Border Payments Money By Jay Jaffin, Head of Global Digital, Western Union May 24, 2021. Funds can be picked up in cash at half a million Western Union agent locations worldwide or transferred electronically to the recipients bank account or to a debit card linked to a digital wallet. Divestiture Will Support Western Union's Strategic Focus on its Global Cross-Border Payments Platform and Digital Capabilities The strategy is also to reduce costs; on-prem infrastructure and people running it is expensive and you need back-ups of everything, especially in financial services. We embrace the white canvas and first principles design, breaking away from legacy systems to create smart . Western Union Digital Banking - Apps on Google Play So, constant iteration and rapid delivery are crucial. Experience in leading digital products from either the financial services, payment, or fintech industries. Western Union is also focused on the global remittance market. Most popular: Free $20 Amazon.com e-gift code for every friend you refer (earn up to $500). Western Union powers your pursuit. My mission is to empower people to become economically self-reliant. Western Union Partners with MFS Africa to Enable Money Transfers into The international roll-out continues to other countries at pace. Something we could take forward is a digital dollar, which we could make transferable all around the world with our vendors. My Career Summary Anil Santhapuri is a values-based and results-oriented Talent professional, with 20 years of professional experience in the areas of talent management, learning & leadership development. Western Union has had a compound annual growth rate above 25 percent over the past five years, since the launch of the digital division. Singh is a proponent for a Central Bank Digital Currency, which he says is significantly different to the digital assets such as BitCoin and Ethereum, which can fluctuate wildly in value over short periods of time. Management, Digital Workplace
Meeting the moment with solutions required Western Union to accelerate its own digital transformation. Sector, Travel and
Receive rewards. We started function by function, looking at individual deployments across our different groups in the company. Consumers can 'Send Now, Pay Later' by borrowing up to AUD 2000 through Beforepay's wage-advance product on Western Union's digital channels. Western Union and Zain Cash Collaborate to Facilitate Digital Cross Some changes that used to take a month, we now deliver in around 48 hours.. How Western Union Became a Global Digital Front-Runner for Cross-Border Improvements that we made to our apps digital customer experience, for example, helped it become one of the most downloaded apps among our peer set in 2020. To learn more about the data economy, what your organization stands to gain from using data effectively, and how to become a Data Economy Leader, download the report overview, How to Win in Todays Data Economy. Most of the customers for remittance service (e.g. Once a customer notarises their documents, they can be stored in a safe location and distributed across the blockchain network, so any regulatory authority or government can access that information. Working across many cultures at Western Union | McKinsey Governments pay close attention to cross-border money transfers, and heavily regulate these services to prevent fraud, tax evasion, and other criminal activities. The resulting report, How to Win in the Data Economy, includes anecdotes from dozens of customers, analysts, and influencers about how to succeed, all in addition to the survey itself, based on feedback from 1,000 senior business, technology, and data managers across five industries and from all over the world. They have also triggered profound changes within global banking, demanding that lenders remain flexible, nimble, and innovative in their digital-banking strategies to meet customers' rapidly . DENVER-(BUSINESS WIRE)-The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU), a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments, today announced that the Company has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a minority stake in fast growing Saudi Digital Payments Company, or stc pay, a fully owned subsidiary of Saudi Telecom Company. The network upgrade will pave the way for Econet to deliver 5G connectivity in more . Western Union Digital Banking is offered by Western Union International Bank GmbH. They can include creating strategy placemats (one-page strategy overviews that are easily shared), frequent team huddles, one-on-one coaching, and process confirmation. Western Union must adapt to an increasingly mobile world: if Western Union doesnt develop low-cost mobile money transfers, Western Union wont be able to compete with new competitors like Ant Financial and Zelle. The idea is to orient the company around improving these market-shaper practices, really getting the health of our organization strong, and becoming confident that if we can improve the health of the organization, the financial results will follow. Arvie de Vera - LinkedIn The scale of change this represents for a business like Western Union is not to be underestimated; the company employs around 11,000 people and has more than 550,000 retail agents locations within . To ensure those approaches were safe and secure, we partnered with governmental organizations to find new and secure ways to verify customers. Created: 05-05-2021 - 17:15. Build customized, secure, and scalable mobile banking apps. Consumers are less aware that we have transformed ourselves into one of the largest digital money transfer firms in the world, with our digital activity generating well over $400 million revenues in 2017. Many of its 150 million customers worldwide depend on money transfers to pay for food, electricity, medication, and other necessities. Its an ecosystem of complementary platforms that enable a seamless, single customer experience I think thats such a powerful proposition.. Services, Public
They essentially sponsor a team and loan the resources that are necessary. Please enable Javascript to see this feature. Western Union, MFS Africa Partner to Enable Money Transfers into Mazzaferro: Keep it simple. Whats really nice about that is that its so visually obvious. Western Union has recently partnered with other digital platforms to expand its digital offerings. This will enable the company to maintain its high . On May 17, 2018, at the Digital Assembly in Sofia, Bulgaria, the European Commission launched the Digital Agenda for the Western Balkans. Arab Emirates. The aim of this paper is to sketch a brief history of complex digital transformation of media and . As such, when Western Union embarked on its technology transformation, it was keen to recruit personnel who could help achieve its vision. s full anLearn more about the data lake, a repository for structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data that provided direct access to raw organizational data. Continue to partner with popular digital platforms to provide legacy C2C money transfer services. The Western Union Way of digital transformation. [6], However, regulators cant keep pace with the wave of new blockchain applications. - Earn My WU points. Jaffin: Its important for us to continue trying new technology that gets us closer to customers and their changing needs, like advanced analytics and other tools. OutSystems provides the innovation and agility to accelerate the digital transformation of Western Union. Policy . With OutSystems, we deploy twice every week. Heres how, Customers want control over their data and wont hesitate to switch brands to get it, Global Insights Briefing: Holiday takeaways for marketers, From solar panels to spa days, see how 2022s top searches set the stage for 2023. Sources for images:Western Union vs. Bitcoin, Bitland,MyWU,Ripple Union. We serve all customer segments: from digital natives who are never without their smartphones to the 4 billion people on earth the World Bank estimates arent online yet., Western Union is strongly committed to migrants and to refugees: migration is at the heart of our business. The gap between access and use is growing, with 56% of people in . What Ive tried to do is look at each of the groups and find out who the strong players in each of them are, the leaders that are vocal and very straightforward in conversation. One of its most high-profile hires was Harveer Singh, who was appointed as Chief Data Architect & Global Head of Engineering and previously co-led EYs Next Generation architecture & solutions for Financial Services. Western Union. Driving Western Union's Tech Transformation | by Digital Bulletin Open a free Western Union Digital Banking bank account to manage your international finances and make instant, transfer fee-free* money transfers to other Western Union Digital Banking account holders. Lean deployments are a big piece of our overall transformation program. In 2016, Western Union completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions and 523 million business payments world-wide, moving more than $150 billion of principal for consumers and businesses. Leaders across many industries and companies of all sizes report that one of their biggest challenges is siloed data. Society Updated: 01-06-2022 - 11:45. Western Union is doing that. Leadership. He shares his views on digital transformation and economic opportunities for all. BWIRE: Support youths to enhance their digital skills Business Unit Represents Approximately 7% of Company Revenue . (2017) Monitoring Media Pluralism in Europe: Application of the Media Pluralism Monitor 2016 in the European Union, Montenegro and Turkey. For decades, Western Union benefited from network effects as it added density and new geographies. Talends technology was used to bring various sources of data from different locations into a single place in rapid fashion, helping make decisions such as waiving fees for those sending funds to people caught up in the explosion. Snowflake enables us to centralize our data and enable application and business processes to leverage it across the organization. For decades, Western Union has defended its global position by investing in regulatory compliance. She also has worked with ad agencies like Ogilvy and McCann. Transformation, Cyber
22 Companies Spearheading Digital Innovation in Their Industries in Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. Specifically,. While WU is considered a global leader in their space, competitive insights and . Western Union is a partner of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and is a leading voice in the conversation of how to build a global payments ecosystem, which is stable and where remittances can be made much faster. Pay for your transfer instantly with a debit or credit card** or start a money transfer and complete the payment in cash at a nearby agent location. Commenting on the advantages of development on OutSystems, Tom says, "We estimate that we're getting new products . Packaged Goods, Engineering
Anil Santhapuri - Director of Skills Solutions, Global Talent Our goal was to build a new Cloud-based IT architecture based on microservicesthat would allow us to integratemany different systems quicklyboth internal and external vendors, explains Tom. (2013) Comparing Media Systems beyond the Western World. In 2017 SEED supported 20 projects, impacting 5,000 children and youth; we hope to support event more in 2018.. It is our responsibility to enable businesses, problem solvers, regulators and communities to leverage fintech for the betterment of lives. As consumer expectations continue to evolve, digital will play an ongoing role in helping financial services brands deliver value to their customers and drive business growth. Singh estimates that the project has reduced how much it spends on talking to its customers by a quarter, while markedly improving this critical function. Services, High
We scored ourselves as an organization on these market-shaper practices when we started the transformation in 2016. An advantage of Western Unions omnichannel approach is that it includes all customers, whether they are integrated or not in the financial system: the banked, the underbanked, and the unbanked. Our research identified 10 attributes of an organizations data infrastructure that enable it to take full advantage of the data economy, the global supply and, Editors note: This is part of a series about the data economy. Companies like Venmo(PayPal) and Zelle(joint venture by several large U.S. banks) have deep pockets, but so far are mostly competing in domestic payment markets. Imagine what we can do if you let us work with your team as well.. [11] Western Unions footprint of retail locations gives it a worldwide laboratory for experimenting with blockchain applications. Western Union video | re:Invent 2021 | AWS Second, Western Unions employees may not have the knowledge or training to effectively lead Western Unions digital transformation, and may resist digital initiatives or operational changes. Its reach is staggering: present in more than 200 countries and territories, transacting in 130+ currencies, with approximately 150 million people having used Western Union to either send or receive funds over the last year. A lot of our big data environment is still on-prem and the mission is to move that completely to the cloud by the end of the year. Kong, New
; Offering combines Deloitte's ConvergePROSPERITY BankingSuite solution and multiple AWS services. Ericsson will help accelerate Econet's digital transformation journey. & Distribution, Media and
Experts at TCS and Western Union share the trends that are affecting digital transformation in financial services. Data and insights gave us the ability to make important strategic decisions in the throes of what could have been a panic. Discover the latest data, insights, and inspiration from Think with Google. How do you start there and end up with a fully embedded transformation across a company of 12,000 people? Automation reduces development toil, were more productive, so we dont need so many developers, and we dont end up with orphaned code when developers leave. And being with the people that are actually doing the work really helps the management get a better sense of where they can use their leadership and influence to make that process easier for the employee and better for the customer. Automation, Microsoft
Jaffin: Western Union has a culture of innovating to meet customer needs, and the past 12 months have shown us that quick pivots can drive lasting change. Leadership Team - Western Union | Corporate Finally, shareholders may punish Western Union for moving away from its higher margin core business to focus instead on simpler, lower-cost digital money transfers. Provide value consistently every month and deliver new value and capabilities. Profiles, Infosys Knowledge
Driving Western Union's tech transformation - Digital Bulletin Were there tools or technology that were particularly helpful in your transformation? Singh was given autonomy to mould his teams, combining the skills already at Western Union with external talent, many of which were from a consulting background, resulting in a diverse and varied team, which he says proved invaluable. Western Union's digital services align with the UAE government's policy to create an economy driven by innovation and technology," said Salma Massoud, head of digital, Middle East and Africa . As the figure below shows, five components are needed to execute an organization's digital transformation: 1. My team and I had thought of the future being digital, of course, but the pandemic really forced us to make it a reality for the business. From apps that save lives to those that process loans in a
In just 11 months, we delivered a full-service digital banking experience that expands our relationship with customers.. Manager of a Team responsible for First Level Support, Event monitoring and Major Incident Management to internal and external clients that affects core processes and clients. Complete your profile for personalized recommendations, Managing Director, U.S. Financial Services at Google. Western Union is to shed its Business Solutions unit, with investment firms Goldfinch and Baupost set to acquire the business for $910 million in cash. The top challenge for businesses with digital transformation goals in 2023 is determining where their companies should direct spending on technologies, according to a BCG X report. This entails a leader or a manager being on the floor with people doing their day-to-day jobs, just observing the way they work. . He shares his views on digital transformation and economic opportunities for all. Western Union launched its digital banking app in Germany and Romania in Spring 2022, following 11 months of iterative development. And its not something you can achieve really quickly, its a multiple-year process. Best practices were also key. . Looking back at the results of our work over the last couple of years across all of our deployments, you see some really impressive gains. But Western Union is missing the true potential of blockchain for its business. Salesforce has a value proposition that was immediately interesting because it allows you to build a single omnichannel journey that can be managed really efficiently when I want to make a change I only need to do so in one place. Unless they can feasibly use technology to improve their cost structure, Im super bearish on Western Union. Western Union Advances Its Digital Growth Strategy With Investment in Business Unit Represents Approximately 7% of Company Revenue Divestiture Will Support Western Union's Strategic Focus on its Global Cross-Border Payments Platform and Digital Capabilities The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU), a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments, together with Goldfinch Partners, LLC ("Goldfinch"), a private equity firm investing in . Digital Summit WB6 - Prishtina 2022 Western Union Software Purchases and Digital Transformation Initiatives The new generation of customers, especially Millennials, want to find us in the ecosystem of messaging apps.. And when you have that, it becomes easier to have a stronger level of influence than you might otherwise expect with a small team, because everyone in the organization is clear that, whether youre working directly with the WU Way team or not, your job is to find ways for continuous improvement. Digital transformation in the EU. Before OutSystems, we typically released every six weeks. At its core is a migration from on-prem to a cloud-based infrastructure, which it believes is key to allowing the organisation to scale and evolve into a company with the clout of an established financial institution combined with the agility and flexibility of a modern FinTech. [10]Jeff John Roberts, Western Union is Testing Ripple and XRP for Money Transfers, Fortune, Feb. 14, 2018. Powering Digital Transformation: How Western Union Leverages the Data your next, Infosys
Western Union, Chief Data Officer: Digital Transformation Initiatives First, for continuity of services. Dan Nordlander is senior vice president of Western Union Way Operations at Western Union, and Barr Seitz is senior manager of editorial and digital communications in McKinseys New York office. We will expand our Messenger bot to other countries and add other languages, he adds. How did you evolve for digital convenience and safety? Tom Mazzaferro, Chief Data Officer at Western Union together with Nick Halsey, CEO at Okera talk about the technology that Western Union has adopted to help build new products and Western Union, Chief Data Officer: Digital Transformation Initiatives (Part 3) | Cloud | cdomagazine.tech Mazzaferro: Technology is a critical part of the equation, of course, but technology can never drive culture change. That makes it much easier to go into other areas of the organization and say, We did this in this part of the company. Africa's largest payment gateway, MFS Africa, has partnered with Western Union to enable individuals and businesses across the continent to receive money Us, Terms
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When people send money to friends or family across the country or around the world, chances are good that Western Union is involved. [7]For a helpful overview of how Blockchain is being used in emerging markets, see Vinay Gupta & Rob Knight, How Blockchain Could Help Emerging Markets Leap Ahead, Harvard Business Review, May 17, 2017. Over the last two years, Singh has been accelerating Western Union's tech plan. Sydney Mahan, The First Transcontinental Telegram was sent to DC 155 Years Ago, Washingtonian.com, Oct. 25, 2016. Today customers can commence their journey on our mobile App, pay for their transaction digitally or opt to pay cash from any of our participating Western Union retail locations, use wu.com or go directly to any of the 1,200 agent locations or Western Union-owned locations in Austria[i]. Entertainment, Professional
For more details about how Western Union went from 34 on-prem data warehouses to pursuing a multi-cloud strategy based on Snowflake, read our case study. If Western Union tries to grow its blockchain capabilities within current operations, internal resistors may directly or indirectly sabotage the initiatives. People who knew how a team or a group worked before can come in and see its night-and-day different. We wont bug you too much because thats more work for all of us. The transformation of a legacy company whose roots lie in the era of the telegraph involves more than just lean deployments and agile methodologies. Download the Western Union (WU) money transfer app and quickly start sending cash to Mexico and worldwide, 24/7! Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. The CDO needs to drive digital transformation by enabling data to power product development and the company. The pandemic really accelerated the digital transformation journey; the plan was for it to be rolled out in three years but that timeframe became 18 months, Singh tells Digital Bulletin. Originally, the capacity of our on-prem environments wasnt projected to hit capacity until 2022, but we could see that point was going to be reached in 2020, so that meant a real acceleration.. We continue to experiment with the technology and time will tell if it offers a better alternative to traditional rails.. In order to fund the investments, we decided that it was really important to do a transformation exercise, look for ways to gain efficiencies and effectiveness across our processes and procedures, and then use those efficiencies to fund the growth investments. [5]. In a report on ERP modernization, the global market intelligence firm highlights how Western Digital . After the catastrophic explosion in Lebanon in 2020, the two companies worked together to build data pipelines to help those affected by the incident and provide support to agents in the area. Western Union's stock price continued to climb the week of April 12 reaching $25.89, compared to a low of $21.66 in January. Nov 2011 - Present11 years 5 months. Western Union also is uniquely positioned to explore blockchain applications in emerging markets by leveraging Western Unions retail footprint, regulatory compliance learning, and global brand. And on our website, we added new support and wayfinding tools to ensure customers could quickly and easily access information. It requires a change in process and culture, the adoption of a common lingo, executive buy-in, and a center of excellence to ensure enterprise-wide success. The company, which has been in the money-transfer business since 1871, launched online transfers via WU.com in 2000 and got into mobile money transfers in 2007. These are seismic factors currently redefining our world, earning their own epochal moniker: The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Each quarter our research team identifies on-prem and cloud applications that are being used by the 11000 Western Union employees from the public (Press Releases, Customer References . | Learn more about Rokas kudas's work experience, education, connections & more by visiting their profile on . We know there are certain systems that we cannot just move to the cloud straight away such as the AS400 IBM mainframe, but weve managed to take the ecosystem that surrounds our legacy technology and move it to the cloud and we think we can get everything to the cloud before the end of the year. The transformation of Western Digital to a Live Enterprise Modernization of legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications provides an opportunity for a technical upgrade as well as a transformation of the core business, according to IDC. For example, in 2016 Western Union integrated money transfer options with messanging apps WeChat and Viber, allowing users to send small amounts of money through the apps. It works with Talend to streamline data movement in compliance with GDPR across financial, reconciliation, auditing and trading partners. Western Union began a mission to transform the settlement platform with streamlined retail and digital cross-border money transfer operations to overcome the challenges and constraints of their legacy settlement systems. The Western Union Company (WU) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript 1 (March 1990), pp. Convera. With my work with WEF, I was lucky enough to sit around a table recently with some important people and talk about how we can take this forward. The OutSystems platforms capabilities were immediately put to the test through 2021, as Western Union and its system integrator started development of its new digital banking app that includes a multicurrency bank account combined with money transfers, and other added benefits such as a Visa Platinum debit card. They tend to be younger, they live online and they prefer to do everything there, at the touch of a button, Fellahi observes. The scale of change this represents for a business like Western Union is not to be underestimated; the company employs around 11,000 people and has more than 550,000 retail agents locations within its global financial network, as well as a global online presence.