In 1860 the U.S. Congress arranged among the telegraph companies a competition to create a national line. The winner was Western Union. Leaving the idea of expansion into Europe, Western Union took up the expansion of services in the U.S. market. Money transfer is a matter of minutes, at any distance. One of the common kinds of money transfer is a transfer via the international system of Western Union. In October 1871 the company Western Union began to provide money transfer services, drawing on its own extensive telegraph network.