Western Union’s New Media Network Drives Fourth-Quarter Revenue Growth

Western Union’s new media network business contributed to 56% revenue growth for its Consumer Services segment in the fourth quarter.

The provider of cross-border, cross-currency money movement, payments and financial services announced the launch of its media network business in November, saying that this new offering lets companies advertise to Western Union customers via company-owned channels, reach a global audience, and connect with consumers when they are in a “commerce mindset.”

Together with the launch of this offering in the United States, the company’s expansion of its retail foreign exchange business in Europe contributed to the growth of its Consumer Services segment in the fourth quarter, it said in a Tuesday earnings release.

“We have made it a goal to grow this segment of our business double digits annually by providing new products and services to our existing customers through our existing channels,” Western Union President and CEO Devin McGranahan said Tuesday (Feb. 4) during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

Overall, Western Union’s fourth-quarter revenue increased 1%. The company said in the earnings release that a lower contribution from Iraq lowered its revenue growth rate by 3 percentage points. The firm said in July that it had been impacted by sanctions placed on 14 Iraqi banks.

While its Consumer Services segment saw revenue growth of 56%, Western Union’s Consumer Money Transfer (CMT) segment saw a 4% decrease and its Branded Digital business saw a 7% increase.

Western Union’s deployment of its new cloud-based point-of-sale (POS) system has moved faster than expected. McGranahan said during the call that while the company aimed to have 25,000 active locations by the end of 2024, it ended up having 70,000.

McGranahan said during an October earnings call that by moving many processes from agent hardware to the cloud, the new POS system can accelerate both the rollout of improvements and the core processing times.

Now, the company aims to have “all relevant agents globally” on the new platform by the end of 2025, McGranahan said during Tuesday’s call.

“We continue to see improvements in speed, reliability, agent support and customer satisfaction,” McGranahan said of the cloud-based POS system.