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. 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. One of the common kinds of money transfer is a transfer via the international system of Western Union. In 1991, Western Union has sold some low-profit division of the company AT & T, GM Hughes Electronics, and to some others. In the same year the company changed its name to New Valley Corp. 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 the 1910-1920 years. Western Union is actively engaged in researching, innovating in the field of data transmission. In the summer of 1990 top managers of the Western Union Company spent day and night in the main office in Englewood (Colorado, USA). They needed to meet the challenge: to save the Western Union from bankruptcy, paying off the debts of the company millions of dollars. 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.