Roger Fingas
Western Union on Wednesday announced support for Apple Pay in its iPhone app, potentially speeding up international money transfers versus using a credit card or a bank account.
Apple Pay transactions must originate in the U.S., but can go out to over 200 regions worldwide, the company said. Once the option is selected in the app, the only other requirement is to authenticate via Touch ID.
Western Union has long offered Apple Pay at its physical locations, beginning its rollout in Jan. 2015 — just a few months after Apple Pay itself became available. This included kiosks in Walgreens and Duane Reade stores.
Since then Apple Pay has expanded considerably, not just in terms of merchant support but banks, countries, and even the methods in which it works. In addition to stores, restaurants, and apps it works on the Web, at train turnstiles, and also at some ATMs.
The Western Union Money Transfer app is a free download for iPhones and iPods with iOS 8 or later.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Stephen Silver
Charles Martin
Amber Neely
2 Comments
As I just mentioned to someone in another thread, PopMoney.com is quite easy to use. If privacy is a concern, I suppose one could always go the Bitcoin route, but the security issues surrounding holding Bitcoin make the whole enterprise needlessly difficult for noobs.
Western Union in the USA is mostly used by immigrants to send money back to family members in Latin America. I suspect few of these people have credit cards or iPhones. They use cash at a physical store, usually a multi services franchise of some sort, not an actual Western Union location, at least that seems to be the situation here in California. I've been using WU web site lately to send money to Mexico to help out a friend who can't work due to illness. It doesn't work in Safari though. You can't log in for some reason, probably some Javascript hack, but Apple Pay would be an improvement because WU won't have your credit card on file in the case they get hacked.