Devin Wenig, CEO and President of Western Union, discusses the company's strategic pivot to stablecoins at the DAS conference. Western Union operates as a licensed financial institution across 50+ countries with 100 million customers, 400,000 retail locations, and moves hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

The conversation covers Western Union's launch of USDPT, their proprietary stablecoin on Solana, designed to solve capital efficiency problems and provide dollar-denominated financial services to underbanked populations. Wenig explains how stablecoins will transform their business model from negative to positive float while enabling new banking-like services through stablecoin-backed cards.

Key topics include competitive positioning against crypto companies and traditional remittance providers, the technical decision to build on Solana, organizational challenges of implementing blockchain technology across a 175-year-old company with 16,000 employees, and the future of institutional money movement on public blockchains.

Western Union's Capital Efficiency Problem and Stablecoin Solution

"On any given day, we have a couple of billion dollars floating around in the system" to pre-fund instant transfers due to T+2, T+3 settlement delays - Devin

Stablecoins enable institutional-grade real-time settlement, transforming Western Union from negative float business paying for capital to positive float earning Treasury interest

"If I can free up a couple billion dollars of capital, I can buy back half the company" due to cash currently required on balance sheet - Devin

Infrastructure challenge involves getting partners in 100+ countries to accept stablecoin settlement for hundreds of billions in annual volume

Stablecoin-Backed Cards as Banking Alternative

New value proposition allows customers to receive Western Union stablecoin instead of local currency, protecting against inflation and political instability

"You can walk into a Western Union and you can walk out with a stablecoin card. And that, in essence, is almost a bank account" - Devin

Cards function as U.S. dollar-denominated accounts that customers can spend at point-of-sale, add money to, and hold value without opening traditional bank accounts

"Lower income people don't have access to offshore accounts. They can't open a bank account in Miami or London. But a stable card proxies that same ability" - Devin

Competitive Landscape and Customer Differentiation

"My 100 million customers and Coinbase's 100 million customers are 100 million different people. The overlap is very low" - Devin

Western Union customers unlikely to use Coinbase for $200 transfers to family members who need to convert crypto to buy basic necessities

"The platform that poses the most potential risk to us would be Facebook and WhatsApp" due to communication-money transfer connection - Devin

Meta not seen as major threat because "my customers are generally at the lower end of the socio and economic strata" and aren't valuable for advertising revenue - Devin

Technical Implementation and Blockchain Choice

Western Union chose Solana for USDPT launch due to "highly efficient transactions and transaction economics" with low or no transaction costs

Company remains "chain agnostic" and will run USDPT on multiple blockchains, with Ethereum considered for more sophisticated future applications

Proprietary stablecoin approach allows programmable compliance features, partner-specific terms, and embedded rewards versus generic stablecoins

"We want to retain control design and economics because we're solving the problem for us" rather than using existing stablecoins like USDC - Devin

Organizational Transformation at 175-Year-Old Company

Western Union employs roughly 16,000 FTEs globally with 2,000 in the U.S. and "about 3,000 people in our compliance organization" - Devin

"Everyone is so enthusiastic" about stablecoin initiatives that "all 17,000 people want to go work on stablecoin" creating focus challenges - Devin

Company maintains strict focus on two primary goals: institutional-grade money movement and receive capabilities in USDPT for customers

"If you don't remain maniacally focused on what it is you're trying to do and keep everybody moving there, it's very hard to get anything done" - Devin

Local Market Liquidity as Blockchain Adoption Bottleneck

"We can get in and out of SAF at about 2%. If you go into the gray market, which is where most crypto companies do, it's 6% or 7%" - Devin

Western Union's central bank relationships and local treasury capabilities provide significant cost advantages over crypto exchanges in emerging markets

"The problem is not moving money. The problem is, once the coin gets there, how do you cost-effectively create the liquidity that's needed at scale?" - Devin

Solving local market liquidity at scale remains key barrier to institutional blockchain adoption beyond USD-Europe corridors