The presence of Western Union Gold Card at the client greatly simplifies the process of further processing of money transfers of and reduces the operation time for the sending of money, as the "Gold Card" is a carrier of the personal information about the client. 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 2000 was launched the Web site westernunion.com, with which users from certain countries can independently transfer funds online. The Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. In October 1871 the company Western Union began to provide money transfer services, drawing on its own extensive telegraph network.