Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com company, announced that Western Union has selected AWS as preferred long-term strategic cloud provider, as it plans to move a significant portion of its infrastructure to the cloud. Western Union will be using AWS to build a more seamless and reliable experience for its customers who send money and payments to over 200 countries and territories through its mobile application, website and agent locations around the globe. With this move to AWS, Western Union will migrate from current data centres to a microservices architecture, gaining the ability to build and support its applications, regardless of scale, load, or complexity.
AWS’s highly performant infrastructure and security tools, delivering an unmatched set of cloud services, gives Western Union the means to quickly innovate on its global money movement platform. Western Union plans to use a mix of AWS Machine Learning, analytics, database, serverless, containers, and security services to update its systems and products, as well as build new cloud-native applications. One key objective of the company’s cloud-first strategy is to leverage AWS Machine Learning and analytics services to automate business operations and build self-healing capabilities into its money transfer platform. Western Union also intends to leverage Amazon Aurora and Amazon DynamoDB databases, AWS’s fully managed databases built for the cloud, to increase financial transaction throughput, speed payment processing and transfer money with higher performance.
“Our transition to the cloud will enable Western Union to expand our digital footprint and work more efficiently as we evolve to meet the needs of our business and customers. The elasticity and agility that AWS provides will enable us to transform the way we operate and become a cloud-first organisation,” said Amit Sharma, Chief Information Officer, Western Union.
“For example, adopting AWS will enable us to further develop and strengthen our money movement platform to support innovation like Amazon PayCode, a new payment option available in 21 countries and territories including the US, Chile, Colombia, Peru, the Philippines, Thailand, Jamaica, and Kenya, among others, where shoppers can pay for their Amazon purchases in local currency, through Western Union’s network. This omnichannel platform is just one of the strategic initiatives we will move forward with using the scalability and functionality of AWS to innovate,” said Sharma.
“Financial services organisations around the world are turning to AWS, leveraging the breadth and depth of our services to drive innovation, increase agility and analyse vast amounts of data to enable better decisions around customer segmentation, pricing and product development. Already a leader in international money transfers, Western Union is not content to stand still, so they it is working with AWS to drive even more business advantage in this highly competitive and increasingly digital industry,” said Mike Clayville, Vice President, Worldwide Commercial Sales at AWS, Inc. “By choosing AWS, the 168 years young iconic brand is modernising its infrastructure network, enabling the adoption of new technologies and payment channels, while making it easy for consumers and businesses to send and receive money, as well as make payments, quickly and reliably.”
