America was on the verge of civil war and needed a reliable connection between the North and South. On the telegraph market of the USA at this time were operated with six large companies: American Telegraph Company, New York Albany and Buffalo Electro-Magnetic Telegraph Company, Atlantic and Ohio Telegraph, Illinois & Mississippi Telegraph Company, New Orleans & Ohio Telegraph Company, and the brainchild of Sibley & Co. - The Western Union Telegraph. As a result of 2011, net income of Western Union has increased by 28% to $ 1.165 billion, the company reported. Western Union has several divisions, with products such as person-to-person money transfer, money orders, business payments and commercial services. 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). In 1864, fearing the laying of long underwater lines, Western Union offered to carry out laying of telegraph lines to Europe through the Russian Alaska under the narrow Bering Strait and then to Siberia with branching in the major cities of Europe. Payment systems are one of basic elements of infrastructure of e-commerce. In 1914 Western Union engineers invented the first payment card - a prototype of the modern credit card. On the market was placed about 765 million of ordinary shares of the company. On the first day trading on the exchange the company's shares rose by 3.3% and the cost was $ 19.96. Sibley, the founder of Western Union, did not build a new telegraph lines, and persuaded the other players to join. American Telegraph Company, however, still had to buy it.