Traditional companies are fighting to retain relevance as finance moves on-chain. The stablecoin market is the battlefield and over century-old companies are jumping onto the moving train.
Western Union is a prominent player in the world of traditional payments, but as tokenization moves to eat up TradFi, every payments solution provider has a choice to either integrate and build on the new financial layer or sit around and be buried as markets shift and lose care for traditional finance solutions.
Frankly speaking, this isn't the time to debate embracing the change, this is a time to simply move quickly to build on blockchains, this is known for all TradFi players and the news almost every single day reflects it.
Financial services company Western Union has said its forthcoming stablecoin settlement system will use the Solana blockchain.
Announced during the company’s third-quarter earnings call last week, the stablecoin system will consist of the US Dollar Payment Token (USDPT) and the Digital Asset Network, which will be built in partnership with Anchorage Digital Bank, Western Union said on Tuesday.
The company expects that USDPT will launch in the first half of 2026, providing customer access through partner exchanges to broaden accessibility, similar to how the PayPal USD (PYUSD) stablecoin is listed on Binance and other exchanges.
It added that the Digital Asset Network will serve as a cash off-ramp for the remittance platform’s more than 150 million customers, spread across over 200 countries and territories. – Cointelegraph report
It Is interesting to see the choice of blockchain, not that I don't understand the appeal, but it was beginning to seem like traditional players were just going to either launch an Ethereum L2 or a proprietary L1 that's EVM compatible for their payment solutions and any other products or services for that matter.
The appeal of Solana is that it is faster and cheaper, this is already evident in its usage across multiple projects, to which some integrate with real world systems and data.
That said, I think also, that it could be great for our ecosystem if more traditional players tapped other ecosystems besides Ethereum for integration and building.
This is crucial to avoid liquidity concentration that can become a significant financial threat, not just for global economies, but for the decentralized finance industry.
The Stablecoins market is on its way to reaching $2 - $4 trillion by 2030, as popularly projected, having companies of these sizes making major moves guarantees that!
150 million people, moving over $150 billion annually, these numbers are coming on-chain through Western Union, an over 174 years running company.
If this isn't proof that blockchain is taking over, I don't know what should be!
If WU plays their cards right, the blockchain ecosystem could really be the market environment to build back up and reverse the over 18 years trend of market capitalization decline.
That's said, Western Union is a rather profitable company whose net margin for 2024 was 22.22%. This is all surface research but so far, WU has impressive numbers, and given that over 90.22% of its revenue comes from consumer money transfers, it is quite crucial for the company to build intensively on the new financial layer.
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There is no time anymore to remain siloed when talking of the future of finance. And yes, they've lost some time in the process of watching for long. The have that customer base, something they will really leverage to remain in global market.