Tag: Western Union

NY DFS Fines Western Union $60 Million for Anti-Money Laundering Violations

The New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) has fined Western Union for failure to implement effective anti-money laundering compliance programs in-house and for failure to report suspicious activity – some of which could have facilitated human trafficking.

Western Union Settlement a Reminder for PFs: AML Responsibility Doesn’t End at Onboarding

In the announcement last week that Western Union had agreed to pay $586 million as part of a settlement with the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission to resolve investigations into anti-money laundering and consumer fraud violations, authorities described the settlement as the “largest forfeiture ever imposed on a money services business.”

What should payment facilitators take away from this settlement?

WeChat Cuts Global Money Transfer Deal With Western Union

In a deal that could make Tencent-owned social media platform WeChat into a serious payments player, WeChat announced Tuesday (Nov. 17) a deal with Western Union that allows WeChat’s U.S. users to send money cross-border to 200 countries and territories, all while riding Western Union’s rails.

With conflicting laws, industry regulations and security concerns, simplified global money transfers has been a top PF priority. “Consumers are able to fund the money transfer utilizing a debit card, credit card or bank account and easily direct the funds to a Western Union retail agent location around the world, and to a mobile wallet or bank account where available,” said a joint statement from WeChat and Western Union. “WeChat together with its sister product Weixin in China had over 650 million of monthly active user accounts at end of September 2015.”

The Non-Intuitive World Of Authentication And Social Media

A cyberthief walks into a bank branch, fully prepared to impersonate his intended high-net-worth victim. Not only is he equipped with fake IDs in the victim’s name, lots of personal information courtesy of social and search engine research, but the thief has even taken the precaution of breaking into his victim’s social accounts and replacing his thief-like face for the victim’s on the victim’s own social sites. If anyone tries to check on the Facebook or LinkedIn site of the victim, the thief’s face would be confirmed.

The banker in this case sits beneath a tiny video camera, one that is aimed at the seat where customers sit and specifically the facial area of those customers. Controls of the banker-facing screen allow the image to be precisely aimed for customers of varying heights. And while the banker is pitching her safe-deposit boxes and other bank services, software does a quick check on the thief’s face. Sure enough, it matches the social media images—but the software notes that those images were all recently changed. The software’s database maintains a record of the last 10 images of everyone it can find—and that history of images foiled our thief’s efforts.