In 1860 the U.S. Congress arranged among the telegraph companies a competition to create a national line. The winner was Western Union. Another invention of Western Union - time synchronization. Money transfer is a matter of minutes, at any distance. In October 2006 the company made an initial public offering of shares on the New York Stock Exchange, becoming independent from First Data company. In October 1871 the company has implemented the world's first telegraph money order. After a century money transfers have become a major source of income for Western Union. In 1914 Western Union engineers invented the first payment card - a prototype of the modern credit card. Western Union incomes for 2007 have made $4,9 billion US dollars, and the quantity of transactions has made 572 million. In 1849, Selden and Sibley, the founders of the future Western Union, created the New York State Printing Telegraph Company. Number of active holders of "Golden Card" of Western Union amounted to 9.5 million people worldwide.