Western Union has taken of 451st position in the rating Fortune 500 in 2009, having moved from 473rd line in 2008. In 1860 the U.S. Congress arranged among the telegraph companies a competition to create a national line. The winner was Western Union. In order to increase competitiveness and market expansion of its services, Western Union launched a program of loyalty Western Union Gold Card for customers, who has repeatedly made money transfers via Western Union. In 1866, Sibley ordered the engineers to develop a Western Union telegraph system of stock quotes in real time. Separation of the companies had two objectives: first, to give Western Union the opportunity to develop more intensively, and secondly, to help First Data to return to its original activity (in 1992 the company separated from the payment system of American Express as an independent financial services company). Thanks to cooperation with Western Union the Associated Press at the end of the XIX century took almost monopolistic position in the U.S. market news. In 2000 was launched the Web site westernunion.com, with which users from certain countries can independently transfer funds online. In 1884 Western Union has become a joint-stock company and was brought to the stock exchange. The company has entered in the first American stock index Dow Jones.