Western Union Trademark Filings Signal Crypto, Web3 Exploration

The international money transfer company has filed crypto-related trademark applications

article-image

Source: Shutterstock

share

key takeaways

  • Recent trademark filings could imply that Western Union wants to launch its own virtual currency exchange and cryptocurrency token
  • The financial services company has plans to expand offerings into managing and administering digital assets

Western Union has filed crypto-related trademark applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, trademark attorney Mike Kondoudis said

The applications made by Western Union imply that the company intends to launch its very own virtual currency exchange and cryptocurrency token. The financial services company also has plans to expand into managing and administering digital assets.

Loading Tweet..

Until now, Western Union has been relatively cautious about entering blockchain technology. 

In December 2018, former Western Union Global Money Transfer President Odilon Almeida said adding cryptocurrencies as a customer option would be a big reach, as digital assets had not yet mastered governance, compliance and volatility and received global acceptance.

Added Almeida: “Cryptocurrency might become one more option for a way for assets to be exchanged between people and countries. If that happens, we would be ready to launch.”

It seems that now, four years later, the growing adoption of blockchain technology — alongside the increased competition in the international money transfer space — has finally pushed the financial services giant to tap crypto markets. 

Earlier this year, centralized crypto exchange Coinbase had begun trialing a remittance program for recipients in Mexico, challenging the market dominated by Western Union. 

Coinbase claimed its services were significantly cheaper than traditional cross-border payments and was looking to expand its services globally to the world’s 1.7 billion underbanked.

Even so, Western Union remains one of the biggest players in the global remittance industry, and Almeida has held onto the belief that “[Western Union is] better positioned to benefit from the crypto-currency movement in the long-term than any start-up.”

“Western Union is already better equipped to solve for such variables because it already moves money across 130 currencies and devotes substantial resources to all of those three challenges,” he said.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (10).png

Research

Innovations on Aptos’ technical design through Raptr, Shardines, and Zaptos approach near-optimal latency and throughput by unlocking 100% utilization of network resources, with the capacity to settle 260k transactions per second with latencies less than 800ms. The original Move language was revamped with the launch of Move 2, supporting more expressivity in smart contract logic and a scalable ability to interact with high volume datasets. The ecosystem has benefitted from strong asset inflows, now hosting over $1.3B in stablecoins, $450M in bridged BTC, and $530M in RWAs. Activity in the Aptos ecosystem has grown notably over the past year, with monthly application revenue reaching ~$835k and monthly DEX volumes growing to over $5B, both at new all time highs.

article-image

Interchain Labs will focus on sovereign L1s and institutional demand, abandoning plans for smart contracts on the Cosmos Hub

article-image

Also, only three tokens have outperformed bitcoin so far this year: XMR, HYPE and SKY

article-image

The fund group has submitted proposals in recent months for other funds that would hold litecoin, solana, XRP, HBAR, Sui and others

article-image

Momentum’s back — BTC leads, risk assets follow

article-image

Ondo Finance’s acquisition of blockchain development company Strangelove follows its buy of Oasis Pro

article-image

Cryptocurrency and stock traders alike had a lot to unpack Wednesday