Western Union

Western Union connects people and businesses around the globe by providing fast, reliable and convenient ways to move money. The 160 years old company has more than 500,000 Western Union Agent locations in more than 200 countries and territories.

“We will continue to be proactive—anticipating, adapting to and addressing the ever-changing needs of our customers, always striving to stay one step ahead.”

Hikmet Ersek

President and Chief Executive Officer

Business Need

Western Union has built significant scale in the money transfer business with 242 million consumer-to-consumer transactions and 459 million business payments in 2013 alone.
The company is transforming and focusing on developing an omni-channel approach that includes retail, web and mobile.

The company faces increasing competitive pressure from emerging technology players.
Western Union wants to expand into new markets with e-commerce and other digital products with a goal of reaching customers with a more tailored and personalized experience.

Challenges

In 2013, Western Union processed more than 29 transactions per second, on average, which generated a significant amount of structured and unstructured data that must be integrated from diverse sources (legacy, mobile and online data).
Data scientists must rely upon the data platform to conduct statistical modeling and predictive analysis, systematically noting trends in sending and receiving behaviors.