The Western Union Company - the American company, specialising on granting of services of monetary intermediary. Western Union was founded in 1851. The company is one of leaders in the market of the international remittances. In October 2006 the company made an initial public offering of shares on the New York Stock Exchange, becoming independent from First Data company. You do not need to open a bank account, so you can send or receive money in any of the 170 000 service points of Western Union around the world. In 1914 Western Union engineers invented the first payment card - a prototype of the modern credit card. Western Union incomes for 2007 have made $4,9 billion US dollars, and the quantity of transactions has made 572 million. In 2000 was launched the Web site westernunion.com, with which users from certain countries can independently transfer funds online. The Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. Western Union made so that the time in all of American civil services was the same.