- Western Union confirms that its customer numbers were up by almost 50% in Q2 2020.
- There were dips in other metrics such as revenues.
- A senior figure at the firm struck a hopeful tone about the future of the business in the context of the pandemic.
International money transfer giant Western Union has confirmed that its customer base rose significantly over the course of Q2 2020.
The firm said that its number of monthly consumers who were active on the platform went up by 45% on a year-on-year basis.
In further good news, the firm also said that its mobile app was the best performing one in terms of downloads out of all the cross-border payments app on the market.
However, the firm did also indicate that there may be some problems on the horizon in terms of its overall revenues.
Over the course of the quarter, revenues were down by 17% compared to the previous one.
In an interview with a financial press outlet, Raj Agrawal, who is the chief financial officer at Western Union, said that many of those who were becoming customers of the company for the first time via its website were also new Western Union customers altogether.
“The great thing about us is that 80% of these new customers visiting WU.com are also wholly new to Western Union,” he said.
He was also keen to emphasise that the company did not perceive these developments as a “shift” – primarily because it was not replacing pre-existing in-person business streams but augmenting them.
“This is not a shift because this digital growth isn’t coming at the expense of our retail business so much as it is about getting new customers to the category and other customers from other parts of the remittance market, like banks and other digital financial services providers,’ he said.
As the interview progressed, Agrawal appeared to suggest that research from his firm confirmed that customers who had just started using Western Union’s digital platforms were planning to stay.
“New needs have arisen in various markets around the world. So, it really is a win-win situation for us in terms of the trends that we see,” he added.
Insight
Regular watchers of the cross-border payments markets are unlikely to be surprised at the news that Western Union’s headline numbers are up.
Western Union is probably the world’s most famous online money transfer service, and it will always be able to trade to some extent on brand recognition.
While on the face of it, there is little surprise that figures tracking digital growth (such as app downloads) are up during the pandemic age, these figures do emphasise the fact that traditional payment methods are on the wane – and that the march of digital is, most likely, fairly inexorable.
To learn more about what companies such as Western Union are up to and how they are performing during these unprecedented times, just head over to our news pages.
