Western Union CO

Overview

The Western Union Company (the “Company,” “Western Union,” “we,” “our,” or “us”) is a leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement, payments, and digital financial services, empowering consumers, businesses, financial institutions, and governments with fast, reliable, and convenient ways to send money and make payments around the world. Our goal is to offer accessible financial services that help people and communities prosper. The Western Union brand is globally recognized and represents speed, reliability, trust, and convenience.

As we continue to seek to meet the needs of our customers for fast, reliable, and convenient global money movement and payment services while focusing on regulatory compliance, we are also working to provide consumers and our business clients with access to an expanding portfolio of financial services and to increase the ways our services can be accessed, including through the launch of our digital wallet in certain countries.

Our Segments

We manage our business around the consumers and businesses we serve and the types of services we offer. We operate through two segments: Consumer Money Transfer and Consumer Services.

Our Consumer Money Transfer service enables people to use our well-recognized brands to send money around the world, usually within minutes. We believe that brand strength, reach of our global network, convenience, reliability, and value have been important to our business. As of December 31, 2024, our global network included agent locations in more than 200 countries and territories and many Western Union branded websites. Each location in our agent network is capable of facilitating a consumer’s use of one or more of our services, with the significant majority offering a Western Union branded service. As of December 31, 2024, approximately 380,000 of our agent locations had conducted money transfer activity in the previous 12 months.

Our Consumer Services segment includes our bill payment services, money order services, retail foreign exchange services, prepaid cards, lending partnerships, digital wallets, and media network.

The table below presents the components of our consolidated revenue:

(a)

On August 4, 2021, we entered into an agreement to sell our Business Solutions business to Goldfinch Partners LLC and The Baupost Group LLC (collectively, “the Buyer”), and the final closing for this transaction occurred on July 1, 2023. Accordingly, we no longer report Business Solutions as a separate segment.

Consumer Money Transfer

Money transfers from one consumer to another are the core of our business, representing 90% of our total consolidated revenues for 2024. A substantial majority of these transfers were cross-border transactions. Our money transfer service is mainly conducted through our retail agent locations but also includes our websites and mobile applications marketed under our brands (“Branded Digital”). This segment includes five geographic regions whose functions are primarily related to generating, managing, and maintaining agent relationships and localized marketing activities. We include Branded Digital transactions in our regions. By means of common processes and systems, these regions, including Branded Digital, create one interconnected global network for consumer transactions, thereby constituting one Consumer Money Transfer business and one operating segment.

Operations

Our revenues are primarily derived from consideration paid by customers to transfer money. These revenues vary by transaction based upon factors such as channel, send and receive locations, send and receive funding method, the principal amount sent, and, when the money transfer involves different send and receive currencies, the difference between the exchange rate we set to the customer and a rate available in the wholesale foreign exchange market.

In a typical money transfer transaction, a consumer provides information, either at one of our agent or subagent locations or online, specifying, among other things, the name and other identifying information regarding the recipient and the principal amount of the transfer. The consumer also provides funds for the transaction, including fees. Certain of these processes are streamlined for consumers who participate in our loyalty programs or are registered Branded Digital customers. This information is entered into our money transfer system, and the funds are made available for pick-up by the recipient within our system, usually within minutes, in the country or territory specified by the consumer, or paid into the designated account of the recipient. Consumers then receive a unique identifying number assigned by our system, which the consumer must communicate to the recipient in order to obtain a payout in cash. In this situation, the recipient generally enters an agent location in the designated receiving country or territory, presents the unique identifying number and identification, where applicable, and is paid the transferred amount by our agent based on the information in our system. Recipients generally do not pay a fee. However, in limited circumstances, a tax may be imposed by the local government on the receipt of the money transfer, or a fee may be charged by the recipient’s institution related to the use of an account. We determine the fee paid by the sender, which generally is based on the principal amount of the transaction, the send and receive country or territory, the send and receive funding method, and channel.

In a retail transaction, we generally pay our agents a commission based on a percentage of revenue. A commission is usually paid to both the agent that initiated the transaction, the “send agent,” and the agent that paid the transaction, the “receive agent.” For most agents, the costs of providing the physical infrastructure and staff are typically already covered by the agent’s primary business (e.g., postal services, banking, check cashing, travel, and retail businesses). Western Union’s global reach and large consumer base allow us to attract agents we believe to be well-positioned to deliver our services. In a Branded Digital transaction, we typically pay a credit card processor or bank a fee for collecting the principal, and we are also responsible for losses from chargebacks and fraud, in addition to commissions owed to the receive agent in the event of cash payout.

Services

We offer money transfer services in more than 200 countries and territories, with a number of options for sending funds that provide consumers convenience and choice, through both our retail and digital money transfer channels.

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Retail- The majority of our remittances constitute retail transactions in which payment is collected at an agent or owned location and is available for pick-up at another location, usually within minutes. We offer a variety of methods for consumers to initiate transactions. In select markets, consumers may stage a transaction either online or using a mobile device and subsequently pay for the transaction at one of our agent or owned locations. Additionally, in certain agent locations, consumers can enter a transaction at a self-service kiosk and subsequently pay for the transaction at the counter of the location.

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Digital- In many countries and territories, consumers can initiate a money transfer from a Western Union branded website or mobile application or from sites and applications hosted by our third-party digital partners.

Consumers can fund a transaction in a variety of ways, in addition to cash. For example, at certain of our agent locations, consumers can fund a transaction using a debit card, and, where available, consumers can fund a money transfer from an account and through an account using an automated teller machine (“ATM”). In digital channels, consumers can generally fund transactions using a credit card, debit card, electronic funds transfer processed through the automated clearing house (“ACH”) payment system or similar system outside the United States, online banking direct payment methods, other bank account-based payment, or, where available, from our or our partners' digital wallets.

We also provide several options for the receipt of funds. At our retail agent locations, consumers generally receive payments in cash. However, in certain countries, our retail agents may also issue a money order or check or provide payout through an ATM. Funds can also be directed to a bank account in many countries, by either the sender or receiver, and in more limited circumstances, can be paid into or directed to a mobile wallet, a stored-value card, or debit card.

Distribution and Marketing Channels

We offer our Consumer Money Transfer services around the world primarily through our global network of agents and subagents in most countries and territories, with approximately 90% of our agent locations being located outside the United States. Our agents facilitate the global distribution and convenience associated with our brands, which in turn helps create demand for our services and helps us to recruit and retain agents. Western Union agents include large networks such as post offices, banks, and retailers, and other established organizations as well as smaller independent retail locations, which typically provide other consumer products and services. Many of our agents have multiple locations. Our agents know the markets they serve and leverage this local knowledge to develop business plans for their markets. In some regions, our agents contribute financial resources to, or otherwise support, our efforts to market our services. Many agents operate in locations that are open outside of traditional banking hours, for example, on nights and weekends. Our top 40 agents and partners globally have been with us for more than 20 years, on average, and in 2024, these long-standing relationships accounted for transactions that generated nearly 60% of our Consumer Money Transfer revenue. No individual agent or partner accounted for greater than 10% of the segment’s revenue during any of the periods presented.

We provide our agents with access to our multi-currency, real-time money transfer processing systems, which are used to originate and pay money transfers. Our systems and processes enable our agents to pay money transfers in over 130 currencies worldwide. Certain of our agents can pay in multiple currencies at a single location. Our agents provide the point-of-sale presence and facilitate the interface with Western Union required to complete the transfers. Western Union provides central operating functions such as transaction processing, settlement, marketing support, and consumer relationship management to our agents, as well as compliance training and related support. Some of our agents outside the United States, whom we refer to as master agents, manage subagents. Although the subagents are under contract with these master agents (and not with Western Union directly), the subagent locations typically have access to similar technology and services as our other agent locations. Our international agents often customize services as appropriate for their geographic markets. In some markets, individual agents independently offer specific services such as stored-value card or account payout options.

We have expanded the number of our owned and operated locations and our agent “concept stores,” in which we partner with agents who have demonstrated high-quality customer service and expertise in serving particular geographies or corridors. We believe that our owned locations and concept stores allow us to better control the customer experience, test new products and services, and acquire customers for our digital services at a lower cost.

While we typically perform services under the Western Union brand, in certain geographic regions, we operate under other brands targeted to the local market, such as Vigo and Orlandi Valuta. We market our services to consumers in a number of ways, directly and indirectly through our agents and their subagents, leveraging promotional activities, grassroots, direct-to-consumer communications, digital advertising, and other incentives. We cooperate with various partners around the world to offer a variety of branded, co-branded, and non-Western Union branded money transfer services, including services offered exclusively under the partners’ brands. While the terms of these arrangements vary, these services are often marketed by the third-party partner and offered under the partner’s license to provide money transfer services. As a result, the regulatory requirements applicable to us under these arrangements may also vary.

Industry Trends

Trends in the volume of cross-border money transfer activity correlate with migration, global economic opportunity, and related employment levels worldwide. A significant trend that continues to impact the money transfer industry is increasing regulation. Regulations in the United States and elsewhere focus, in part, on anti-money laundering, anti-terrorist financing, consumer protection, transparent pricing, consumer privacy, data protection, and information security. Regulations require money transfer providers, banks, and other financial institutions to develop systems to prevent, detect, monitor, and report certain transactions. Such regulations increase the costs to provide money transfer services and can make it more difficult or less desirable for consumers and businesses to use money transfer services, either of which could have an adverse effect on money transfer providers’ revenues and operating income. Additionally, our ability to enter into or maintain exclusive arrangements with our agents has been and may continue to be challenged by both regulators and certain of our current and prospective agents. For further discussion of the regulatory impact on our business, see the Regulation discussion in this section, Part I, Item 1A, Risk Factors- “Risks Relating to Our Regulatory and Litigation Environment.”

We are seeing increased competition from, and increased market acceptance of, electronic, mobile, and internet-based money transfer services as well as digital currencies, including cryptocurrencies. We believe this shift in consumer preference will continue, resulting in an increasing proportion of remittances being sent through digital means in the future.

Competition

We face robust competition in the highly fragmented consumer money transfer industry. We compete with a variety of remittance providers, including:

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Global money transfer providers - Global money transfer providers allow consumers to send money to a wide variety of locations, in both their home countries and abroad.

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Regional money transfer providers - Regional money transfer providers, or “niche” providers, provide the same services as global money transfer providers but focus on a smaller group of geographic corridors or services within one region, such as North America to the Caribbean, Central, or South America, or Western Europe to North Africa.

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Digital channels - Digital service providers, including certain payment providers, allow consumers to send and receive money digitally using the internet or through mobile devices. Digital channels also include digital wallets, digital currencies, including cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency exchanges, and social media and other predominantly communication or commerce-oriented platforms that offer money transfer services.

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Banks, postbanks, and post offices - Banks, postbanks, and post offices of all sizes compete with us in a number of ways, including money transfers, bank transfer and wire services, payment instrument issuances, and card-based services.

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Informal networks - Informal networks enable people to transfer funds without formal mechanisms and often without compliance with government reporting requirements.

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Alternative channels - Alternative channels for sending and receiving money include mail and commercial courier services and card-based options, such as ATM cards and stored-value cards.

We believe the most significant competitive factors in Consumer Money Transfer remittances relate to the overall consumer value proposition, including brand recognition, trust, reliability, consumer experience, price, speed of delivery, distribution network, variety of send and receive payment methods, and channel options.

Consumer Services primarily consists of our bill payment services in Argentina and the United States and our money order services. Also included are our retail foreign exchange services, media network, prepaid cards, lending partnerships, and the non-money transfer aspects of our consumer ecosystem, such as our digital wallet, which allows consumers in certain countries to load and spend funds. Consumer Services revenue represented 10% of our total consolidated revenues for 2024.

Our bill payment services provide fast and convenient options for consumers, businesses, and other organizations to make payments, including to utilities, auto finance companies, mortgage servicers, financial service providers, and government agencies. Generally, these bill payment services are initiated by consumers making a cash payment at an agent or an owned location or making a payment through westernunion.com. We believe our business partners, who receive payments through our services, benefit from their relationship with Western Union, as it provides them with real-time or near real-time posting of their customers’ payments. In many circumstances, our relationships with business partners also provide them with an additional source of income and reduce their expenses for handling of payments. Revenue from our bill payment services is derived primarily from transaction fees paid by customers and billers.

Consumers use our money orders for making purchases, paying bills, and as an alternative to checks. We derive investment income from interest generated on our money order settlement assets, which are primarily held in United States tax-exempt state and municipal debt securities.

In our retail foreign exchange services, we provide consumers with access to exchange currencies at our retail locations, earning revenues for the difference between the exchange rate we set to the consumer and the rate at which we acquired the currency. In our media network, we earn revenues by reaching consumers with relevant offers and brand messages, in retail locations, on our websites and mobile applications, or on third-party sites. For non-money transfer aspects of our consumer ecosystem, we derive income primarily from transaction fees and contractual relationships with partners such as the issuing bank for Western Union-branded prepaid cards.

Intellectual Property

The Western Union trademarks and service marks and the Company’s Black & Yellow trade dress are used and/or registered worldwide and are material to our Company. We offer money transfer services under the Western Union®, Vigo®, and Orlandi Valuta® brands. We also provide various payment and other services under many brands and product names, including Pago Fácil®, Quick Collect®, Quick Pay SM, and Quick Cash®. Our operating results have allowed us to invest significantly each year to support our brands, and in some regions, our agents have also contributed financial resources to assist with marketing our services. Additionally, we own patents and patent applications covering various aspects of our products and services, covering a range of technologies, including those related to money transfer, compliance analytics, fraud prevention, and mobile applications.

Regulation

Our business is subject to a wide range of laws and regulations enacted by the United States federal government, each of the states, many localities, and many other countries and jurisdictions, including the European Union (“EU”). These include increasingly strict legal and regulatory requirements intended to help detect and prevent money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud, drug trafficking, human trafficking, and other illicit activity. These also include laws and regulations regarding financial services, consumer disclosure and consumer protection, currency controls, money transfer and payment instrument licensing, payment services, credit and debit cards, electronic payments, unclaimed property, the regulation of competition, consumer privacy, data protection, and information security. Failure by Western Union, our agents or their subagents (agents and subagents are third parties, over whom Western Union has limited legal and practical control), and certain of our service providers to comply with any of these requirements or their interpretation could result in regulatory action, the suspension or revocation of a license or registration required to provide money transfer or payment services, the limitation, suspension, or termination of services, changes to our business model, loss of consumer confidence, private class action litigation, the seizure of our assets, and/or the imposition of civil and criminal penalties, including fines and restrictions on our ability to offer services.

Money Transfer and Payment Instrument Licensing and Regulation

Most of our services are subject to anti-money laundering laws and regulations, including the Bank Secrecy Act in the United States, as amended (collectively, the “BSA”), and similar laws and regulations in the United States and abroad. The BSA, among other things, requires money transfer companies and the issuers and sellers of money orders to develop and implement risk-based anti-money laundering programs, to report large cash transactions and suspicious activity, and in some cases, to collect and maintain information about consumers who use their services and maintain other transaction records. In addition to United States federal laws and regulations, many other countries and states impose similar and, in some cases, more stringent requirements. These requirements may also apply to our agents and their subagents. In addition, the United States Department of the Treasury has interpreted the BSA to require money transfer companies to conduct due diligence into and risk-based monitoring of their agents and subagents inside and outside the United States, and certain states in the U.S. also require money transfer companies to conduct similar due diligence reviews. Compliance with anti-money laundering laws and regulations continues to be a focus of regulatory attention, with recent settlement agreements being reached with several large financial institutions.

Economic and trade sanctions programs administered by the United States Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) and by certain foreign jurisdictions prohibit or restrict transactions to or from (or dealings with or involving) certain countries, regions, governments, and in certain circumstances, specified foreign nationals, as well as with certain individuals and entities such as narcotics traffickers, terrorists, and terrorist organizations. We seek to provide limited money transfer and payment services to parties in Syria and certain regions of Ukraine in accordance with United States laws authorizing such services, and pursuant to and as authorized by advisory opinions of, or specific or general licenses issued by, OFAC.

In the United States, almost all states license certain of our services, and many exercise authority over the operations of certain aspects of our business and, as part of this authority, regularly examine us. Many states specify the amount and composition of eligible assets that certain of our subsidiaries must hold in order to satisfy our outstanding settlement obligations. In compliance with these regulations, we invest some of the principal of outstanding money orders, money transfers, or payments in highly-rated, investment grade securities, and our use of such investments is restricted to satisfying outstanding settlement obligations. We regularly monitor credit risk and attempt to mitigate our exposure by investing in highly-rated securities. The substantial majority of our investment securities, classified within Settlement assets in the Consolidated Balance Sheets, are held in order to comply with state licensing requirements in the United States and are required to have credit ratings of “A-” or better from a major credit rating agency.

These licensing laws also cover matters such as government approval of controlling shareholders and senior management of our licensed entities, regulatory approval of agents and in some instances their locations, consumer disclosures and the filing of periodic reports by the licensee, and they may require the licensee to demonstrate and maintain certain net worth levels. Many U.S. states also require money transfer providers and their agents to comply with federal and/or state anti-money laundering laws and regulations. There are different shareholding thresholds that may require prior regulatory approval in connection with certain licenses our subsidiaries hold in the United States and outside of the United States. As such, any person who intends to acquire 10% or more of the total equity interest of our Company may be required to obtain prior approval from (or rebut the presumption that such person will become a controlling shareholder with) one or more of our regulators. In addition, certain of our licensed entities are required to make prior notification and seek prior approval from our regulators when certain shareholding thresholds are exceeded.

Outside the United States, our money transfer business is subject to some form of regulation in almost all of the countries and territories in which we offer those services. These laws and regulations may include limitations on what types of entities may offer money transfer services, agent registration requirements, limitations on the amount of principal that can be sent into or out of a country, limitations on the number of money transfers that may be sent or received by a consumer, and controls on the rates of exchange between currencies. They also include laws and regulations intended to detect and prevent money laundering or terrorist financing, including obligations to collect and maintain information about consumers, recordkeeping, reporting and due diligence, and supervision of agents and subagents similar to and in some cases exceeding those required under the BSA. In most countries, either we or our agents are required to obtain licenses or to register with a government authority in order to offer money transfer services, and in certain countries, we must maintain sufficient cash or other funds to satisfy payout obligations in these countries. Where we cooperate with partners around the world to offer money transfer services marketed exclusively under the partners’ brands, the regulatory requirements applicable to us may vary.

The majority of our EU business is managed through our Irish payment institution subsidiary, Western Union Payment Services Ireland Limited, which is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland under the Second EU Payment Services Directive EU 2015/2366 (“PSD2”). PSD2 imposes rules on payment service providers like Western Union, aiming to drive increased competition, innovation, and transparency across the EU payments market, while enhancing consumer protection and the security of internet payments and account access. PSD2: (i) has increased the supervisory powers granted to member states with respect to activities performed by companies such as Western Union, and our agent network, (ii) provides for customer identity verification and authentication measures and agent monitoring responsibilities, (iii) provides member states with the ability to limit the types, nature, and amount of charges we may assess and increases customer refund rights, and (iv) increases information security and incident reporting responsibilities.

Under our PSD2 license and local EU member states’ implementing legislation and associated regulatory supervisory powers, guidelines, and regulatory technical standards, we are responsible for the regulatory compliance of our agents and their subagents. We are also subject to requirements such as capital and safeguarding rules, certain consumer protection requirements, information technology, and operational security risk management requirements, outsourcing oversight requirements, and periodic regulatory examinations similar to those in the United States. These rules have resulted in increased compliance and agent monitoring costs, regulatory guidelines and associated supervision, and increased competition across the payments industry as a result of the entry of many new payment service providers. We continue to monitor the impact on our business of PSD2 and associated regulatory guidelines and technical standards, including indicators of changes in the payment services market such as competition from new payment and electronic money license authorizations, including those by multinational online service and technology companies, and we are also monitoring the potential impact of the Third Payment Services Directive (“PSD3”), which will replace PSD2 but has not yet been brought into effect.

Our European Union digital money transfer business is managed through our Austrian banking subsidiary, which is regulated by the Austrian Financial Market Authority under the Austrian Banking Act. Its digital money transfer business is subject to payment services regulated under PSD2 and local implementing legislation. Following the United Kingdom's (“UK”) departure from the EU (“Brexit”), we also have a payment institution to conduct money remittance in the UK, which is authorized by the Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”) and offers retail money transfer services via UK agents and our UK Branded Digital services. In addition, we have a subsidiary that operates under a banking license in Brazil.

We have developed and continue to enhance our global compliance programs, including our anti-money laundering program, comprised of policies, procedures, systems, and internal controls to monitor and to address various legal and regulatory requirements. In addition, we continue to adapt our business practices and strategies to help us comply with current and evolving legal standards and industry practices, including heightened regulatory focus on compliance with anti-money laundering or fraud prevention requirements. These programs include dedicated compliance personnel, training and monitoring programs, suspicious activity reporting, regulatory outreach and education, and support and guidance to our agent network on regulatory compliance. Our money transfer and payment service networks operate through agents in most countries, and, therefore, there are limitations on our legal and practical ability to completely control those agents’ compliance activities.

Regulators worldwide are exercising heightened supervision of money transfer providers and banks’ relationships with money transfer providers and requiring increasing efforts to ensure compliance. As a result, we continue to incur significant compliance costs related to customer, agent, and subagent due diligence, verification, transaction approval, disclosure, and reporting requirements, including requirements to report transaction data to a greater extent or frequency than previously required, along with other requirements that have had and could continue to have a negative impact on our financial condition and results of operations.

Government agencies both inside and outside the United States may impose new or additional rules on money transfers affecting us, our agents, or their subagents, including regulations that:

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prohibit, restrict, and/or impose taxes or fees on money transfer transactions in, to, or from certain countries or with certain governments, individuals, and entities;

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impose additional customer identification, proof of legal residence, and customer, agent, and subagent due diligence requirements;

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impose additional reporting or recordkeeping requirements or require enhanced transaction monitoring;

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limit the types of entities capable of providing money transfer services, impose additional licensing or registration requirements on us, our agents, or their subagents, or impose additional requirements on us with regard to selection or oversight of our agents or their subagents;

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impose minimum capital or other financial requirements on us or our agents and their subagents;

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limit or restrict the revenue which may be generated from money transfers, including transaction fees and revenue derived from foreign exchange;

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require enhanced disclosures to our money transfer customers;

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require the principal amount of money transfers originated in a country to be invested in that country or held in a trust until they are paid;

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limit the number or principal amount of money transfers which may be sent to or from a jurisdiction, whether by an individual, through one agent, or in aggregate;

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impose more stringent information technology, cybersecurity, data, and operational security requirements on us or our agents and their subagents, including relating to data transfers and the use of cloud infrastructure;

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impose additional risk management and related governance and oversight requirements, including relating to the outsourcing of services to other group companies or to third parties; and

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prohibit or limit exclusive arrangements with our agents and subagents.

Consumer Protection Regulations

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the “Dodd-Frank Act”) created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”), which implements, examines compliance with, and enforces federal consumer protection laws governing financial products and services, including money transfer services. The CFPB has created additional regulatory obligations for us and has the authority to further define participants in markets for consumer financial products and services and examine and supervise us and our larger competitors, including for matters related to unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts and practices (“UDAAP”), the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (“EFTA”) and Regulation E. The CFPB’s regulations implementing the remittance provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act have affected our business in a variety of areas. These include: (i) a requirement to provide consumers sending funds internationally from the United States with enhanced, written, pre-transaction disclosures and transaction receipts, including the disclosure of fees, foreign exchange rates and taxes, (ii) an obligation to resolve various errors, including certain errors that may be outside our control, and (iii) an obligation at a consumer’s request to cancel transactions that have not been completed. We have modified certain of our systems, business practices, service offerings, and procedures to comply with these regulations. We also face liability for the failure of our money transfer agents to comply with the rules and have implemented and are continuing to enhance additional policies, procedures, and oversight measures designed to foster compliance by our agents. The extent of our and our agents’ implementation of these policies, procedures, and measures may be considered by the CFPB in any action or proceeding against us for noncompliance with the rules by our agents. The CFPB has also implemented a direct portal for gathering information regarding consumer complaints, including with respect to money transfers. The CFPB uses the information collected to help improve its supervision of companies, enforcement of federal consumer financial laws, and writing of rules and regulations. This effort may lead to additional regulations and regulatory scrutiny of our business. Most recently, the CFPB created a non-bank company registry to collect information about certain publicly available agency and court orders and facilitate CFPB supervision. We have registered with the CFPB, as required, uploaded the requested orders, and must additionally comply with annual attestation requirements.

In addition, various jurisdictions in and outside the United States have consumer protection laws and regulations, and numerous governmental agencies are tasked with enforcing those laws and regulations. Consumer protection principles continue to evolve globally, and new or enhanced consumer protection laws and regulations may be adopted. Governmental agencies tasked with enforcing consumer protection laws or regulations are communicating more frequently and coordinating their efforts to protect consumers. As the scope of consumer protection laws and regulations change, we may experience increased costs to comply and other adverse effects to our business.

Derivatives Regulations

Rules adopted under the Dodd-Frank Act by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the “CFTC”), as well as the provisions of the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (“EMIR”), as amended, and its technical standards, which are directly applicable in the member states of the EU and have been retained in the UK since Brexit, have subjected certain foreign exchange hedging transactions, including certain intercompany hedging transactions and certain of the corporate interest rate hedging transactions we may enter into in the future, to reporting, recordkeeping, and other requirements. Additionally, certain of the corporate interest rate hedging transactions and foreign exchange derivatives transactions we may enter into in the future may be subject to centralized clearing requirements or may be subject to margin requirements in the United States, the EU, and the UK. Other jurisdictions outside of the United States, the EU, and the UK, have implemented, are implementing, or may implement regulations similar to those described above. Derivatives regulations have added costs to our business, and any additional requirements, such as future registration requirements and increased regulation of derivatives contracts, will likely result in additional costs or impact the way we conduct any hedging activities.

Unclaimed Property Regulations

Our Company is subject to unclaimed property laws in the United States and in certain other countries, and our agents are subject to unclaimed property laws in some jurisdictions. These laws require us or our agents, as applicable, to turn over to certain government authorities the property of others held by our Company that has been unclaimed for a specified period of time, such as unpaid money transfers and money orders. We hold property subject to unclaimed property laws, and we have an ongoing program designed to help us comply with these laws. We are subject to audits with regard to our escheatment practices. For further discussion of the risks associated with unclaimed property, see Part I, Item 1A, Risk Factors - “We are subject to unclaimed property laws, and differences between the amounts we have accrued for unclaimed property and amounts that are claimed by a state or foreign jurisdiction could have a significant impact on our results of operations and cash flows.”

Privacy Regulations and Information Security Standards

We must collect, transfer, disclose, use, and store personal information in order to provide our services. These activities are subject to information security, data privacy, data protection, data breach, and related laws and regulations in the United States, the EU, and most of the other countries in which we provide services. These laws and requirements continue to evolve and may become increasingly challenging to comply with.

In the United States, federal data privacy laws such as the federal Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and various state laws, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), the Colorado Privacy Act (“CPA”), and other data privacy and breach laws, apply to a broad range of financial institutions including money transfer providers like Western Union and to companies that provide services to or on behalf of those institutions. The number of comprehensive state privacy laws continues to grow, creating additional risks and complexity due to variations in each state’s law. The United States Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”), which has jurisdiction over companies such as Western Union, has brought numerous enforcement actions, resulting in multi-year settlements and significant fines against companies whose privacy or data security practices allegedly violated the law. The CCPA, CPA, and other state privacy laws impose heightened data privacy requirements on companies that collect information from residents of the particular states and create a broad set of privacy rights and remedies modeled in part on the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), as discussed below. The FTC, the CFPB, and some states continue to investigate companies’ privacy practices including those related to online and mobile applications. Most state laws require notification to be provided to affected individuals, state authorities, and consumer reporting agencies, in the event of a breach of certain types of personal data contained in electronic systems and, in some cases, physical documents. Such notification requirements may be subject to various factors, including the level of encryption, the data elements involved in the incident, and the potential harm to individuals, including consumers, employees, and other individuals. In addition, we are also subject to United States federal reporting requirements in connection with some such incidents.

Increasingly, data protection laws of countries outside of the United States are having a significant impact on our operations and the manner in which we provide our services. The EU has been particularly active in regulating data protection, and the EU’s approach is frequently followed by other jurisdictions. The trend in data protection laws is one of increasingly more stringent regulation. The GDPR, the Digital Operational Resilience Act, and other supranational, national, and provincial laws throughout the world are not uniform but typically include one or more of the following objectives:

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regulating the collection, transfer, processing, storage, use and disclosure of personal information;

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requiring clear notice to individuals of the processing of their personal information;

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providing for individuals' rights of access, correction, and deletion with respect to their personal information;

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restricting the use or disclosure of personal information for secondary purposes;

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taking appropriate actions to protect the personal information;

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maintaining and improving cybersecurity resilience;

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conducting regular risk assessments;

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managing third-party risks; and

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reporting significant cybersecurity incidents in a timely manner.

A significant number of these data protection laws outside of the United States require us to provide, under certain circumstances, notification to affected individuals, data protection authorities, and/or other regulators in the event of a data breach. We have incurred and we expect will continue to incur expenses to meet the increasingly stringent requirements.

An emerging trend is the increase in data localization laws which require either that personal information be hosted on local servers or that organizations restrict the transfer of personal information outside of national borders. These laws present operational and technology challenges that can require companies to make significant changes to the management of personal information and can increase our costs and impact our ability to process personal information. These laws may also restrict or limit our ability to process transactions using centralized databases, including cloud computing infrastructure and software, for example, by requiring that transactions be processed using a database maintained in a particular country or region.

Data privacy regulations, laws, and industry standards also impose requirements for safeguarding personal information. For further discussion of these risks, see Part I, Item 1A, Risk Factors -“Breaches of our information security safeguards could adversely affect our ability to operate and could damage our reputation and adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, and cash flows.”

In connection with regulatory requirements to assist in the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing and other legal obligations and requests, we make certain personal information available to certain United States federal, state, and foreign government agencies. In recent years, we have experienced data sharing requests by these agencies, including in connection with efforts to combat money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud, drug trafficking, and human trafficking. During the same period, there has also been increased public attention to the corporate use and disclosure of personal information, accompanied by legislation and regulations intended to strengthen data protection, information security, and consumer privacy. These regulatory and law enforcement goals, and the protection of the individual’s right to privacy, may conflict or otherwise present challenges, and the law in these areas is not consistent or settled. The legal, political, and business environments in these areas are rapidly changing, and subsequent legislation, regulation, litigation, court rulings, or other events could expose us to increased program costs, liability, and reputational damage.

For further discussion of risks related to current and proposed data privacy and security laws and regulations, see Part I, Item 1A, Risk Factors - “Current and proposed regulation addressing consumer privacy and data use and security could increase our costs of operations, which could adversely affect our operations, results of operations, and financial condition.”

Other

Some of our services are subject to card association rules and regulations. For example, an independent standards-setting organization, the Payment Card Industry (“PCI”) Security Standards Council, developed a set of comprehensive requirements concerning payment card account security through the transaction process, called the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (“PCI DSS”). All merchants and service providers that store, process and transmit payment card data are required to comply with PCI DSS as a condition to accepting credit cards. We are subject to annual reviews to ensure compliance with PCI regulations worldwide and are subject to fines if we are found to be non-compliant.

Human Capital Management

Our People

As of December 31, 2024, our businesses employed approximately 9,100 individuals, of which approximately 1,400 employees are located inside the United States. Our employees span more than 50 countries.

Attracting, Developing, and Engaging Employees

Our recruitment efforts focus on identifying internal and external talent with skills that are critical to our business strategy, such as skills in technology, cloud, data architecture, cybersecurity, payment systems, and other areas of expertise. We actively assess our new talent needs, evaluate the extent to which current staff have critical skills, and provide training and development to our global workforce to build these capabilities. Our recruiting team uses multiple channels to find, assess, and hire employees. As a global company operating in more than 200 countries and territories, we are focused on hiring high-caliber talent that possess a diverse set of skills and experiences and who reflect the diversity of the communities we serve. We aim to create a culture of belonging to support retention and career growth and recognize the strategic importance of belonging in our workforce and in our talent management practices.

Our employee development philosophy centers around learning and empowerment. To position our people for success, we provide our employees with access to a variety of learning, including self-paced digital and facilitated formats. Employees also gain valuable experiences through on the job learning, special assignments and projects, and coaching and mentoring. We provide tools and resources to enable employees and leaders to have quality performance and career conversations to further enable employees to learn and grow. As part of our commitment to a culture of ethics and compliance, we provide new employees with mandatory education related to compliance, ethics, privacy, and information security. Existing employees also receive annual training on these topics.

We assess employee engagement regularly. Our employee engagement approach includes periodic surveys to help leaders better understand what our employees are thinking, what they value, and what they need. We benchmark our engagement results against global peers to better understand our strengths and areas of opportunity. Our ongoing goals include listening to our employees and ensuring that our employees are informed, feel that their concerns are heard, and are empowered to make decisions. We also have site leaders in office locations with more than five employees. The site leader program is an important tool to ensure we have key leaders around the globe delivering consistent messages about our strategy, our values and behaviors, and our customers, while building a deep sense of engagement among our employees.

As of December 31, 2024, over 50% of our global workforce were women and 36% of senior management-level and above positions were held by women. Our leadership team has diverse backgrounds, with wide-ranging, global and cultural experience. Three out of our seven executive officers identify as diverse, including one who is female, one who identifies as Black/African-American, and one who identifies as Hispanic/Latino. Six of our eleven directors are diverse, including four directors who are female and four directors who identify as Hispanic/Latino, Asian, American Indian, or LGBTQ+.

Compensation, Benefits, and Wellness

We seek to provide compensation that motivates, retains, and rewards our employees and attracts future talent. We offer packages designed to inspire the delivery of exceptional performance and results to help us deliver on our business strategy, stockholder commitments, and Company values. To guide our annual compensation processes, we examine and benchmark market data for countries where we operate, as available data allows.

We strive to achieve equal pay for equal work. We regularly review and update salary ranges and perform internal pay equity reviews, with the goal of developing impartial and competitive pay practices and aligning salaries to local market conditions and cost-of-labor changes. We also offer employees multiple channels to raise pay equity concerns, such as our human resources team, ethics helpline, and legal department.

Our benefit packages aim to support the health and well-being of our employees and their families, including same sex domestic partners in all countries where legally permissible. Our benefit packages vary among countries based on laws, cultural norms, and market practices. Benefits generally available to full-time employees include medical benefits, risk insurance benefits (life, disability, and accidental death and dismemberment), global adoption assistance, our employee assistance program (counseling, legal, and other professional services), paid leave, a scholarship program available to employees with college-age children, a global recognition and reward program, and business travel assistance and insurance.

Available Information

The Western Union Company is a Delaware corporation, and its principal executive offices are located at 7001 East Belleview Avenue, Denver, CO, 80237, telephone (866) 405‑5012. The Company’s Annual Report on Form 10‑K, quarterly reports on Form 10‑Q, current reports on Form 8‑K, and amendments to those reports are available free of charge through the “Investor Relations” portion of the Company’s website, www.westernunion.com, as soon as reasonably practical after they are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). The SEC maintains a website, www.sec.gov, which contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information filed electronically with the SEC by the Company.

Information About our Executive Officers

Our executive officers consist of the individuals listed below:

Devin McGranahanis our President and Chief Executive Officer and member of the Company’s Board of Directors (from December 2021). Prior to joining Western Union, Mr. McGranahan was with Fiserv, Inc., a global provider of payments and financial services technology solutions, where he served as Executive Vice President, Senior Group President, Global Business Solutions, from 2018 to 2021 and Group President, Billing and Payments Group, from 2016 to 2018. Before joining Fiserv, Mr. McGranahan served as a senior partner at McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm. While there, he held a variety of senior management roles, including leader of the global insurance practice from 2013 to 2016 and as a co-chair of the global senior partner election committee from 2013 to 2015. In addition, Mr. McGranahan served as co-leader of the North America financial services practice from 2009 to 2016. He joined McKinsey & Company in 1992 and served in a variety of other leadership positions prior to 2009.

Matt Cagwinis our Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer (from January 2023). Mr. Cagwin previously served as our Interim Chief Financial Officer from September 2022 to January 2023. Mr. Cagwin joined the Company in July 2022 as Head of Business Unit Financial Planning and Analysis. Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Cagwin served as Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer – Merchant Acceptance of Fiserv, Inc. from 2019 to 2022, in the same role at First Data Corporation from 2018 to 2019, and as Senior Vice President, Corporate Controller and Chief Accounting Officer of First Data Corporation from 2014 to 2018. Prior to his roles at Fiserv and First Data, Mr. Cagwin spent ten years at Coca-Cola Enterprises in a variety of senior management roles, including Vice President and European Controller and Vice President and Assistant Corporate Controller.

Benjamin Adamsis our Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer (from June 2022) and previously served as our Interim Chief People Officer (from February 2023 to July 2023). Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Adams was Vice President, Legal at PayPal from 2015 to 2022. From 2007 to 2015, Mr. Adams served as Assistant General Counsel, Global Commercial Lead for Microsoft Corporation and held various senior legal positions at Nokia Corporation, including Head of Legal, Americas Region, Head of Legal, India and Emerging Market Services, and Head of Legal, Mergers and Acquisitions.

Giovanni Angeliniis our President, Europe, Africa, and MEPA (from October 2024) and previously served as our President, Europe and Africa (from September 2022 to October 2024). Mr. Angelini previously served as Head of Global Independent Channels and Senior Vice President and General Manager, Global Money Transfer Consumer Network. Earlier in his career, from 1996 until early 2002, he was a Senior Manager at Bain & Company in Italy. From 2002 to 2011, he served as General Manager of Angelo Costa Group (a former Western Union Master Agent). Following the acquisition of the Angelo Costa business by Western Union in 2011, Mr. Angelini became CEO of Angelo Costa and Finint, and then Head of Independent Channels, Europe at Western Union.

Cherie Axelrodis our Executive Vice President, Chief Risk and Compliance Officer (from August 2022). Ms. Axelrod previously served as the Company’s Chief Auditor from 2018 to 2022. Prior to that, she served as Deputy Chief Compliance Officer and U.S. Settlements Lead from 2016 to 2018 and Director of Project Management – Compliance from 2012, when she joined Western Union. Before joining Western Union, Ms. Axelrod held various roles of increasing responsibility, including divisional Chief Financial Officer for the Consumer and Small Business division of Qwest Communications International, Inc.

Rodrigo Garcia Estebarena is our President, North America (from October 2023), and previously served the Company as President, Latin America and the Caribbean (“LACA”) from 2022, Senior Vice President Head of LACA from 2021 to 2022, Vice President Head of Mexico, Caribbean, and Central America from 2017 to 2021, and Vice President and General Manager Mexico from 2014 to 2017. Mr. Estebarena joined Western Union in 2008 as Business Development Regional Director. From 2008 to 2014, Mr. Estebarena held a variety of progressively responsible positions with the Company, including Director of Business Development Stored Value LACA and Director Product Management & New Channels LACA.

Andrew Walker is our Executive Vice President, Chief Operations Officer (from April 2022). Previously, Mr. Walker was Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer at United Services Automobile Association (USAA) from 2020 to 2022 and before that he was Chief Procurement Officer at USAA from 2018 to 2020. Prior to USAA, Mr. Walker was President of Nationwide Bank, a subsidiary to Nationwide where he spent 11 years in a variety of senior management roles, including Senior Vice President, Chief Procurement Officer and Information Technology Chief Financial Officer.