English
36563
 Western Union plans to officially launch a U.S. dollar stablecoin called USDPT in the first half of 2026, and the one that carries this ambition will be the Solana blockchain, which is known for its "high speed and low fees." “The “King of Remittances” turns around: When a century-old store encounters blockchain When we think of Western Union, what comes to mind is a huge empire covering more than 200 countries and regions around the world with hundreds of thousands of offline outlets. It was once the capillary that connected the flow of money around the world, but today, this ancient system is also showing signs of fatigue. You and I may all know the pain points of traditional cross-border remittances: they are slow and expensive. From remittance to collection, a sum of money has to go through a layered network of agency banks. Not only does it take several days, but each checkpoint also requires "goose plucking". According to the World Bank, the average cost of global cross-border remittances has long hovered above 6%, which means that for every $1,000 you send, more than $60 disappears on the road. Western Union’s “toll” model has become increasingly cumbersome under the pressure of fintech startups like Wise and cryptocurrency peer-to-peer transfers. Change is imminent. Western Union’s choice is to embrace the technology that was once regarded as a “disruptor”—blockchain. The core of its plan is to issue USDPT, a stable currency anchored 1:1 with the US dollar, directly targeting its huge customer base of more than 100 million. The goal is simple and clear: use technical means to flatten intermediate links, greatly improve efficiency, and "knock down" costs. Revealing USDPT: Western Union’s “Digital Dollar” Arsenal So, what exactly is USDPT, which has high hopes? To put it simply, you can think of it as a "dollar on the blockchain." It is a stablecoin whose core promise is "1 USDPT = 1 USD". In order to ensure the rigid fulfillment of this promise, there must be real and sufficient assets as support. Issuance and reserves: When a user purchases USDPT with legal currency (such as US dollars), the issuer will simultaneously deposit equivalent, highly liquid reserve assets in the bank account. These reserve assets are not just cash, but are usually a robust portfolio of assets, mainly including cash, cash equivalents, and short-term U.S. Treasury bonds considered gilts. Every USDPT in circulation has a real value anchor behind it. The cornerstone of trust: compliant issuer: In order to dispel market doubts, the issuer selected by Western Union is Anchorage Digital Bank. This is not a little-known grassroots team, but the first national digital asset bank in the United States approved by the federal regulatory agency, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). This means that USDPT will be placed under a strict financial regulatory framework from the beginning, and its reserve management, compliance risk control and audit processes will all be scrutinized, which provides a strong endorsement for USDPT's credibility. On-chain transfer and exchange: Once the minting is completed, USDPT can be transferred on the blockchain network 7x24 hours a day, near real-time. When users need to exchange USDPT back to legal currency, they only need to redeem it through designated channels, the tokens will be destroyed, and the corresponding US dollar funds will be returned to the user's bank account. There are various signs that Western Union is serious about this. They even submitted a trademark application for "WUUSD" shortly after the plan was announced, which means that the food and grass are not touched, but the name comes first. Why Solana? Speed is everything Among the many blockchain platforms, why did Western Union choose Solana? Brilliant speed: Solana’s theoretical transaction processing peak is as high as 65.000 transactions per second (TPS). What is this concept? This is comparable to the processing capacity of major credit card networks such as Visa during peak periods, and is crucial to supporting Western Union’s massive daily transaction needs. Floor-level costs: To complete a transfer on Solana, the transaction fee (gas fee) is usually as low as a few cents, or even less. Compared with traditional remittance fees, which often cost tens of dollars, this is almost negligible, providing a technical possibility for "low-cost remittance". Second-level confirmation experience: The transaction can be finalized in a few seconds, completely bidding farewell to the long wait of "T+N" days for traditional bank transfers. As Western Union CEO Devin McGranahan said, Solana is the “right choice” to build an institutional-grade stable currency platform. The coming storm: How will it change our lives? When a century-old remittance giant is combined with a cutting-edge blockchain technology, the chemical reaction will be far beyond your imagination. For ordinary users, the changes are real: Saving money: Although Western Union has not announced the specific rate reduction range, cases within and outside the industry have given reference. Existing research and pilots have shown that using stablecoins for cross-border remittances can reduce costs from an average of more than 6% to less than 1%, and there are even cases showing cost reductions of 60% or even 90%. There are hundreds of billions of dollars in global remittances every year, and even a savings of just a few percentage points means that billions or even tens of billions of dollars can truly return to the pockets of workers around the world. Faster: Fund flows will move from “calculated in days” to “calculated in seconds”. For families who are in urgent need of money, the value of this improvement in timeliness is difficult to measure in terms of money. More convenience: Western Union’s plans don’t stop online. They also plan to build a huge digital asset network that allows users—even if they are not Western Union’s traditional customers—to exchange crypto assets directly into local cash at its more than 400,000 offline outlets around the world. This move will open up the "last mile" between the digital world and the physical world, greatly lowering the threshold for ordinary people to use crypto assets. Your support and attention are our biggest motivation to continue to produce better works! thank you all~  |
|
|
|
|
|
