Western Union may consider expanding its digital offerings far beyond remittances

Trademark applications seem to allude to an asset and commodity exchange, insurance, and Western Union's own token then that it faces increasingly diverse competition in the remittance market.

Western Union may be gearing up to offer crypto-related services, judging by the company's trademark filings last week. This is the latest of several attempts by the company to enter the cryptoverse. So far it has had limited success.

Western Union filed three trademarks on October 18. According to trademark lawyer Mike Kondoudis, the activities covered by the applications include portfolio management, trading of digital assets and commodity derivatives, issuance of value tokens, as well as brokerage services. and insurance.

Western Union is a major provider of cross-border money transfer services, and it showed early interest and uncertainty in cryptocurrency. It partnered with Ripple to settle remittance payments in 2015, but that partnership remained in the testing phase three years later, and Western Union announced that it would not add crypto transfers to its services. for the foreseeable future.

#WesternUnion filed 3 trademark applications...