Western Union Taps Shelly Swanback To Lead Cross-Border Growth

Western Union

Western Union has appointed Shelly Swanback president of product and platform, tasked with expanding the company’s cross-border, cross-currency global platform, the company announced on Friday (Dec. 20).

As a member of the executive team, Swanback will report directly to Western Union CEO Hikmet Ersek and will work to advance the global platform to support multiple customer segments. 

“I am pleased to announce the appointment of Shelly Swanback after an extensive global search,” said Ersek. “We are inspired by the deep experience she brings to our organization and the integral role she will play in bringing our unique cross-border capabilities to a wider set of consumers and businesses.” 

Swanback joins Western Union after a 27-year career at Accenture where she helped establish the company as a market leader in digital services. 

“I am delighted to join Western Union, an iconic global brand, and work with its deeply experienced leadership to grow the business and propel its new platform strategy,” said Swanback. 

“Western Union’s mission to power a full range of money movement and payment options to serve a broad spectrum of consumers and businesses, through inclusive innovation, make this opportunity especially exciting as the growth and expansion of the Western Union platform will have far-reaching benefits for stakeholders across the globe,” she added.

The appointment follows Western Union’s Investor Day in September, where the management team revealed the company’s platform strategy. The goal is to use Western Union’s cross-border muscle to address global customers’ growing needs for cross-border money transfer and payment solutions.

Western Union announced in October that it was advancing real-time money transfers to customers in India. Western Union was the first money transfer company to use Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a solution developed by the National Payments Corporation of India under Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines. The platform lets Western Union customers transfer money to banks in India using UPI ID, instead of providing banking information.