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Western Union Takes Strategic Stake in Walletron

Western Union Takes Strategic Stake in Walletron

walletron_homepage_december2016

Walletron, the company that hopes to make accessing your mobile wallets as easy as using your digital boarding pass at the airport, has just won a strategic investment from Western Union. Khalid Fellahi, SVP and GM for Western Union Digital, said his firm’s partnership with Walletron helps reinforce Western Union’s commitment to the mobile channel, which he calls “our priority customer-engagement channel” for both money transfer and payments.

Walletron’s technology is an SaaS platform that manages the content and appearance of digital cards in a mobile wallet such as Wallet and Android Pay. The company’s moBills solution enables billers to put a payment and presentment channel on customers’ smartphones to provide for faster payment, important reminders and notifications, and more.

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Walletron CEO Garrett Baird demonstrated moBills at FinovateFall 2015.

The strategic investment—amount undisclosed—comes just a few months after the two companies announced a commercial alliance between Walletron and Western Union’s billpay service, Speedway. The alliance enables Western Union biller clients to add Walletron’s moBills solution to take advantage of personalized notifications, bill information, and other features using their smartphones.

Nasdaq.com reported that Western Union’s investment in Walletron is part of an effort to expand its presence in the mobile payments space. The company’s own research indicates that 27% of all consumers and 48% of Gen Y consumers expect to pay more bills by a mobile device. Mobile World Live compared the Walletron investment to Western Union’s partnership with messaging app WeChat back in November 2015, and noted the company’s competition from mobile remittance/money transfer startups such as Azimo and Xendpay.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Walletron demonstrated its moBills solution at FinovateFall 2015. Check out our Finovate Debut profile of the company from this summer.