Open to crypto

Financial services company Western Union made some waves in the cryptocurrency community by releasing a video in which the company’s global money transfer president Odilon Almeida talks about blockchain technology, cryptocurrency and Western Union’s potential role in this space.

Almeida says:

“If we, one day, feel like it is the right strategy to introduce cryptocurrencies to our platform, technology-wise, it’s just one more currency. I think cryptocurrency may become one more option of currency, or assets, around the globe, to be exchanged between people and businesses. If that happens, we would be ready to launch.”

Almeida says that volatility, governance and compliance are the three main areas a cryptocurrency needs to address effectively before it can be widely accepted as a medium of exchange.

Western Union has been testing Ripple's solutions

Western Union has been engaged in tests with fintech company Ripple for a while now, and has even conducted pilots using the XRP cryptocurrency. In June, Western Union CEO Hikmet Ersek said the company didn’t see efficiency gains with XRP, although he admitted the tests were very limited in scope at the time.

Almeida’s comments in the recently released video seem to suggest that the company’s testing with Ripple is still ongoing.

In October, Ripple launched xRapid, a product for international payments which uses the XRP token as a source of liquidity.

The photograph of the Western Union logo was taken by Richard Allaway, and is available on flickr.