Leaving the idea of expansion into Europe, Western Union took up the expansion of services in the U.S. market. Most service points of Western Union work in the time convenient for customers throughout the week and throughout the year. 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. In 1914 Western Union engineers invented the first payment card - a prototype of the modern credit card.