Western Union is a US-based provider of global money transfer. It offers the ability to quickly transfer money around the world, pay bills and purchase money orders. This transfer is often used by migrant workers used to send money to relatives in their home countries.

Western Union was in 1851 in Rochester by Hiram Sibley (1807-1888) as The New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company was founded. In 1856 she changed her name to Western Union Telegraph Company (after they had taken over some of its competitors) to connect the telegraph lines from coast to coast to show. Western Union was in 1861 the first transcontinental telegraph line ready. 1865 she founded – for trying to America and Europe via Alaska and Siberia to Moscow to join – the Russian American Telegraph .

In 1869 she introduced the first stock market ticker, and a standardized time service in 1870. 1871 led to their Western Union service to transfer money one that was based on its extensive telegraph network. As the telephone replaced the telegraph, was the transfer to the main business purpose of the company. When in 1884 the stock market index Dow Jones Transportation Average for the New York Stock Exchange was launched, Western Union was one of the original eleven participating companies.

1914 Western Union gave out the first credit card for consumers; 1920 she led Telegraph one to connect their offices. 1933 was followed by sung telegrams , fax traffic between cities in 1935, and commercial microwave communications between cities 1943rd In 1958 she began her clients Telex offer. In 1964 Western Union the use of a microwave radiation for transcontinental communications. Western Union in 1974, America’s first telecommunications company with its own communications satellite in a geosynchronous orbit. These satellites ( Westar and Westar 6S 1-6) for transporting the data telegrams and mail messages between the national Western Union offices. They also handled traffic for its Telex – and TWX – ( Telex II ) services. The transponder of Westar satellites were leased to other companies to Video – Voice – Data and – fax forwarding broadcasts.

In the early 1980s, Western Union began due to declining profits and rising debts the slow retreat of telecommunications-based systems. Given the time deregulation began in Western Union to expand its business with money transfers to areas outside the United States and the newly defined as “The fastest way to send money worldwide”. 1994 Western Union was the First Financial Management Corporation bought out a year later with the First Data Corporation went along. On 26 January 2006, the First Data Corporation announced the spin-off of Western Union as an independent, publicly traded company. Since 2 October 2006, Western Union as an independent company at the New York Stock Exchange traded (NYSE: WU).

President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) since 1 Hikmet Ersek September 2010  , before that it was in September 2006 Christina Gold. Gold received payments in 2009 of a total of 8.1 million U.S. dollars. So she earned in 2009 – the year of global economic and banking crisis -. More than three times as much as in 2007.