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The Western Union Co. says its decision to join the early set of providers in Visa Inc.’s interoperable peer-to-peer payments service called Visa+ reflects its business.
Visa+ allows users to move payments between rival peer-to-peer payments networks. The pilot, set to launch later this year, will begin with transfers between PayPal and Venmo, a PayPal-owned network, but plans are to include P2P services DailyPay, i2c, TabaPay, and Western Union.
“The Visa+ product offer is consistent with how we’ve constructed and managed our business,” Western Union chief executive Devin McGranahan told analysts during an earnings call Tuesday on its latest earnings, according to a SeekingAlpha.com transcript. “And with the addition of a digital wallet in the U.S. it seemed to make a lot of sense.
McGranahan noted that Western Union already accepts funds from multiple sources and pays out to “many, many digital wallets, whether that’s Paytm in India or bKash in Bangladesh.” To date, Visa+ is U.S. only.
“And so for us, this is simply an extension of what we already do,” he said. “In fact, we have one of the largest payout networks in the world of any kind. And an important component of that is pay out to account and pay out to digital wallet all around the world.”
For the first quarter, Western Union had revenue of $1.04 billion, a 10.3% decrease from $1.16 billion in the 2022 first quarter. Suspension of operations in Russia and Belarus contributed in part to the drop, though Western Union picked up business in the Middle East and Argentina.
Its first-quarter profit of $151.8 million was a 48.2% decrease from $293.3 million a year ago. The first quarter was a challenge, but the company expects several initiatives to begin paying off later this year.
