The international money transfer service provider Western Union (WU) has launched a campaign against wire transfer transactions. The company's decision to ban services or transactions related to cryptocurrency is covered by its internal regulations.

In a message from a Reddit user in early December 2017, the company reportedly informed Kraken's cryptocurrency exchange that it does not deal with a currency-related transaction digital because it goes against its internal rules.

This decision by WU should adversely affect the functioning of virtual currency exchanges, as well as consumers using cryptocurrencies. This will also affect the profitability of the company as it will lose a lot of business in the long run, given the growing popularity of cryptocurrency worldwide.

The financial services and communications company is based in Colorado. The company was founded in 1851 and is currently headed by its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Hikmet Ersek.

The company offers various services, including fund transfers, wire transfers and business payments. With banks, he has recently been competing with peer-to-peer payment companies and has facilitated cross-border transactions through Blockchain

A trend against cryptocurrencies?

Prohibiting transactions involving cryptocurrencies is similar to the actions taken by different financial providers around the world that prevent their customers from buying and selling digital currencies. Several banks also went a step further by closing accounts involved in trading virtual currencies.

This trend to prohibit transactions involving digital currencies is very unfortunate as virtual tokens continue to grow and slowly but surely win the general public. Although this is a bad precedent for the virtual currency market, it is expected that this continuing trend will have little impact on the continued growth of the main Bitcoin cryptocurrency, as well as on currencies less known virtual ones.