Name: Western Union CEO is Making The 166-Year Old Company More Profitable Than Ever
Uploaded: 2017-11-03
Duration: 4 min 47 s
Description: Hikmet Ersek is heavily invested in digital payments – and it’s paying off big time for Western Union.

[ UNKNOWN ] Everybody knows the name Western Union and it's famous telegrams, or people might not know that it's now the worlds largest money transfer company. Give us a quick description of what does Western Union do these days, Well, do it 31 transactions every second. So we make 31 people happy every second across border, worldwide, in 200 countries with our 500, 000 locations and people trust us and use us. Tell us a little bit about who your customers are. We have consumers. They do cross border money transfer. Most of them are migrants in the send side and receive side their love ones. Some of them send half of their sellers back home and support them. In fact you were telling me that your company's corporate mission is moving money for the better. It's almost like a humanitarian goal. Yeah moving about $ 150 billion every year and that's amazing yeah. And every transaction is about $ 300 for one consumer, and the corporate level importers and exporters is about $ 30, 000. But every time when the money moves in receive content or job is created, families are happy. It's a really purpose driven brand. And you make money, Western Union makes money by charging fees on the amount of money that is send, any kind of foreign exchange is that is involved. I mean roughly. What does that run? Are we talking about a few dollars here and there, hundreds of dollars? What does it run, on average? An average is about 3 to 4 % of the principal. The biggest thing is that you send money now and it arrives now. It's in minutes. Money is send in minutes. And not many people can do that. If you do bank transfers or account transfers it take days. You have definitely benefited from globalization, but how might that change now that President Trump is calling on. Travel bans, a greater scrutiny of how money is moving and where it's going. Hopefully not in the hands of terrorists or drug dealers. What does that mean for your business, more or less business? First of all, I think globalization is just taking a break. You can't stop globalization, I believe. You just have to control it in a In a better way and we do that. And we do have the- probably one of the best compliance programs worldwide. I think when money moves, we really believe good things happening. So I think that that will continue to happen. Let's talk a little bit about digital. You have built up a huge digital business. Now making it possible to move money with a few clicks on your On your cell phone how much is digital contributed to the overall revenues of Western you're now a five and a half billion dollar company? Many customers are using now their mobile phones to send money and you can do it globally from here with your mobile phone to New York, New york to any any where within a minutes and this is our fastest growing part of our business and. You know it's now about 9 % of our revenue and it's about, you know that gives us really a competitive advantage. But how much of a threat is it that there are several Fintech start ups that are moving in on your Turf. First, the competition was always there. For 166 years we have a DNA how to innovate and how to come over these things. Secondly, we are deleting and we are building on our fundamentals, and really expanding from there. You've also been partnering with companies, like APPLE pay, FACEBOOK messenger, how important are these Relationships, especially in terms of staying ahead of the competition. Yeah, they are. I think companies like Facebook, Apple, big companies, or Google, or Amazons, are looking always for partner, like Western Union, where they can offer a global solution. The others are offering only local solutions, we can offer a global solution. So we do work with them, they choose a partner like Western Union, where they have compliance programs. Where they have IT program, where they have an open API, and also they're serving their customer in a way that they are satisfied. All right, so how does this really work because Apple is both your partner, but it's also a competitor? If you go to Western Union's form and you choose to send money to Mexico let's see. You could use your credit card, your account. You can pay in cash or you can use your Apple Pay. So you see that we work together to fund the transaction from Apple Pay. So it's a partner for Apple Pay, for Apple customer, but same time Western Union and you can pay out money in Mexico. It's a simple situation. It's a win- win situation for Apple, for us and for our partners in Mexico. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Hikmet Ersek is heavily invested in digital payments – and it’s paying off big time for Western Union.