In 1860 the U.S. Congress arranged among the telegraph companies a competition to create a national line. The winner was Western Union. In 1935, Western Union has put into operation first intercity fax communication. Leaving the idea of expansion into Europe, Western Union took up the expansion of services in the U.S. market. In 1995, First Financial Management was acquired by First Data Corp. (the deal amounted to $ 7 billion), and Western Union Financial Services became a subsidiary of First Data. Money transfer is a matter of minutes, at any distance. In 1914 Western Union engineers invented the first payment card - a prototype of the modern credit card. 1970 - a new service called In October 1871 the company Western Union began to provide money transfer services, drawing on its own extensive telegraph network.