Western Union (WU), a major American financial services company, recently released a video saying that the company is ready to adopt cryptocurrencies into its operations whenever necessary. Odilon Almeida, the company’s president, commented that the company will be prepared to integrate crypto assets to its international platform if the technology ever gets implemented and adopted by industries on a massive scale.

He added that introducing cryptocurrencies to WU is, technology-wise, just adding one more currency to the 130 currencies the company is already working with. Additionally, the company’s history and knowledge in international money trading gives them an edge when it comes to introducing international crypto trading. Moreover, WU’s huge user base helps the company benefit even more if the new currency was to be utilised worldwide.

Some people disagree that adding cryptocurrencies would be as simple as the CEO said, since blockchain technology is very different from how typical currency transfers work. However, it is worth noting that despite the technology used, the aspects that matter most in the transfer of currencies are transaction costs and the time taken for payments to be verified and go through. WU is a very experienced company when it comes to these aspects, and it is not difficult to imagine the company has already put in efforts to familiarize themselves with how blockchain technology works.

In fact, WU partnered with Ripple Labs, the company behind cryptocurrency Ripple, to investigate whether blockchain offers a cheaper and faster way to make payments. However, WU did mention that the ongoing tests that have been going on for six months have yet to show benefits for the trade.

It is apparent through the video that WU sees potential in blockchain technology and believes the technology will be adopted into multiple industries until one day international transfers of cryptocurrencies would be required. The company is prepared to welcome innovation into the market instead of repeating the mistake made by Blockbuster when the company rejected Netflix’s $50 million offer as they did not realize how revolutionary streaming videos and live video content could be. Now, Netflix’s worth has already exceeded $32 billion, showing how important it is for firms to be able to recognize and embrace potential innovations.