In 1860 the U.S. Congress arranged among the telegraph companies a competition to create a national line. The winner was Western Union. In 1866, Sibley ordered the engineers to develop a Western Union telegraph system of stock quotes in real time. In 1914 Western Union engineers invented the first payment card - a prototype of the modern credit card. In October 1871 the company Western Union began to provide money transfer services, drawing on its own extensive telegraph network.