In February 2009 the company entered into an agreement with Fexco to acquire 100% of its shares for $ 159.9 million. 1998 - the number of points of money transfers worldwide reached 50,000. The network of money transfers of Western Union is the world's largest. In order to increase competitiveness and market expansion of its services, Western Union launched a program of loyalty Western Union Gold Card for customers, who has repeatedly made money transfers via Western Union. In 1866, Sibley ordered the engineers to develop a Western Union telegraph system of stock quotes in real time. Money transfer is a matter of minutes, at any distance. 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. 1970 - a new service called Number of active holders of "Golden Card" of Western Union amounted to 9.5 million people worldwide.