Western Union has taken of 451st position in the rating Fortune 500 in 2009, having moved from 473rd line in 2008. In the Western Union in the 30s of the 20th century worked 14 thousand couriers delivering telegrams. 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 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. 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. 1970 - a new service called Transaction with Fexco has allowed Western Union to control directly more than 10 thousand points of service, which belonged to Fexco in 7 European countries (Spain, UK, Sweden, Ireland, Denmark, Norway and Finland).