In a recent interview with Reuters Plus, Western Union President Odilon Almeida mentioned that one of the world's largest money transfer platforms contemplated hosting a cryptocurrency exchange in their remittance services. The use of blockchain technology in order to improve their existing services is also being looked at.
However, the move would only be implemented if there are global demands and ease of transactions with crypto. Almedia deduced that the reason crypto has not been adopted in a mainstream audience is due to the volatile nature of the market, lack of governance and a global compliance standard as reasons for the stumbling blocks for the growth of cryptocurrency.
He stated:
"Western Union is ready today to adopt any kind of currency. We already operate with 130 currencies. If we one day feel like it’s 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 will be ready to launch."
Western Union were reported as running a trial using blockchain back in early 2018 and it was confirmed to be true by Western Union CEO Hikmet Ersek:
"We are looking especially in the processing settlement and working capital optimization, also in the regulation part, on the compliance part on the blockchain capabilities … And we do test; we do have some tests with Ripple."
However, the tests may not have given the desired results, with the CEO later stating that he did not see a 'significant advantage' while using a Ripple based currency exchange system.
"We are always criticized that Western Union is not cost-efficient, blah blah blah, but we did not see that part of the efficiency yet during our tests … The practical matter is it’s still too expensive.”
In response, Ripple's Senior Vice President noted that the test size was too minuscule in order to deliver the cost-effective results:
"If they were to move volume at scale, then maybe you would see something, but with 10, it’s not surprising that they do not see cost savings. They do millions of transactions a month, and I’m not surprised that with ten transactions it didn’t have earth-shattering results."
Almedia remained optimistic about their trial run with Ripple. Cryptocurrencies, however, have continued to make their way steadily into the mainstream mindset. With topping searches for what cryptocurrency tokens are, to an increased number of investors even as the Crypto market faced a slump in 2018, the future of currency transactions could still be crypto.
