Western Union has taken of 451st position in the rating Fortune 500 in 2009, having moved from 473rd line in 2008. In 1914 Western Union engineers invented the first payment card - a prototype of the modern credit card. 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. Western Union made so that the time in all of American civil services was the same.