In 1860 the U.S. Congress arranged among the telegraph companies a competition to create a national line. The winner was Western Union. In October 2006 the company made an initial public offering of shares on the New York Stock Exchange, becoming independent from First Data company. You do not need to open a bank account, so you can send or receive money in any of the 170 000 service points of Western Union around the world. In 1914 Western Union engineers invented the first payment card - a prototype of the modern credit card. Before transition to remittances Western Union company rendered services on sphere of cable communication.