- New partnership with City Express will focus on a niche area – used car exporting
- It will allow buyers to pay in their home currency and then receive goods from Japan
- “By unlocking our network, Western Union is creating a money transfer and payments superhighway for innovative companies wishing to offer their customers the widest choice of options for cross-border payments”, says WU spokesperson
Internationally recognised cross border payments firm Western Union has confirmed that it will partner with a remittance firm to offer an unusual set of services.
It will work alongside the Japanese firm City Express, which is a major payments services company.
The new partnership will have some specific aims and has been described – unusually – as a “consumer to business”, or C2B firm.
The specific business it will cater to will be the used car sector, and it will help one provider in particular – a car exporter called BE FORWARD.
International payers will be able to place their orders in their own currency, and then route the payment through Western Union so that it reaches Japan in what Western Union described as a “fast and reliable” way.
It will be powered by the Western Union Quick Pay service, which already operates in a range of economies across the globe – such as Chile, Mongolia, New Zealand and many others.
In a statement, Sohini Rajola – who is head of network for the Middle East and Asia Pacific at Western Union – said that it was all part of the firm’s promise to offer “the widest choice of options”.
“By unlocking our network, Western Union is creating a money transfer and payments superhighway for innovative companies wishing to offer their customers the widest choice of options for cross-border payments”, said Rajola.
“We continue to capitalize on our unique cross-border strengths to meet increasing demand from global consumers and businesses for fast and reliable cross-border money transfer and payments”, she said.
For City Express, Keiichi Akasaka said that the collaboration “enables everyone to benefit”.
“We are delighted to champion a global and local relationship that paves the way for a generation of customers that either have a preference to pay in cash or have zero or limited international credit card capabilities”, Akasaka said.
“This new form of cooperation enables everyone to benefit and largely contribute to creating an inclusive globalized world, where citizens around the world can buy global and pay local”, Akasaka added.
Western Union’s brand name is not regularly associated with sector-specific niches in the way it has been here.
It’s more commonly associated with large-scale international money transfer projects which encompass lots of countries and millions of people.
However, this partnership just goes to show that in some cases, even a big remittance behemoth like Western Union can still find value in addressing niche markets.
To discover more about the international money transfer market and how it’s behaving, just head over to our news pages.
