What do we mean when we say our strategy as a company is “mobile first!”?
Nearly 75 percent of the world’s population is expected to be mobile phone subscribers by 2025. That’s a tremendous market opportunity to serve more customers and also expand digital person-to-person money transfers globally.
As Odilon Almeida, the president of Western Union Global Money Transfer, explains in this new Reuters Plus video, mobile first is about making sure every one of our services and features are designed specifically to be seen and used on small mobile screens. This is regardless of whether a customer’s current preference for money is cash or digital.
He argues that Western Union is singularly well positioned to seize this mobile future of money transfer. As a company that does business in 200 countries and territories, WU has a unique insight into the varying maturity of digital adoption in countries around the globe. Moreover, we work in those countries now and already know how to comply with local laws and regulations, so WU is not starting from zero when it talks about expanding mobile-based international financial transfers.
WU’s digital revenue expanded more than 20 percent each of the past 5 years. Almeida explains how the company plans to maintain that blistering rate of growth.
“We have our mobile app launched in North America, in Europe, Oceania, some countries in Asia, and in Latin American Caribbean. Our target is to go to 200 countries and territories in the next years,” he said.
“We believe that digital initiated money transfers in the next few years will represent a very important part of our total universe of customers.
“The future is very clear. It’s about digitizing the customer experience,” he concluded.
