Western Union is taking critical money from the world’s working poor by charging inflated predatory transfer fees, but they have never faced pressure to lower them. Let’s urgently shame them to stop! Add your voice to the petition for fair fees:
This holiday season, Josh, a Kenyan student in the Netherlands, scraped together a year’s worth of savings and sent it home to support 10 struggling family members. Shockingly, the giant money transfer companyWestern Union skimmed off 20% of the cash meant for Josh’s family in fees.
Josh’s story is painfully retold every day, the world over, on a staggering scale — an estimated $44.3 billion worldwide was taken in transfer fees last year! The World Bank recommends that transaction costs not exceed 5% of the total, but Western Union has never faced serious public pressure to lower its crippling charges.
If we unite in a global outcry now, we can expose its predatory practices and shame them to stop. Let’s call on Western Union to lower its fees to 5% for the poorest countries, and when the petition reaches 250,000 we’ll deliver it to the company’s image-sensitive board of directors. Sign now and then forward this to friends and family: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/make_giving_powerful/?vl
Contributions from workers to families across the world dwarf foreign governmental aid every year and provide a vital lifeline to the world’s poorest economies. Slashing the obscene profits of companies like Western Union would dramatically increase assistance flowing into developing countries. Instead, families around the world received far less than they deserved so that Western Union’s CEO could take home $8.1 million in 2009.
The World Bank recommends that transfer companies limit fees to 5% of the amount being transferred, but some banks and companies have astronomical hidden charges. Perversely, the neediest countries coming out of war or disaster suffer the greatest losses, because of transfer companies’ monopolistic privileges and exclusive deals with local banks.
Instead of sustaining lives for family members back home, the yearly savings of men and women laboring in hospitals, construction sites and restaurants end up padding Western Union’s profits. The company funds charity projects to improve its corporate image – but these do nothing to hide the massive inequity that their business model perpetrates. Let’s raise our voices loudly to demand a reasonable transaction fee and help bring immediate benefits to families around the world. Together we can make sure that needy families – rather than CEOs – benefit from holiday giving: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/make_giving_powerful/?vl
When citizens around the world stand together to protest injustice, we can force back unchecked greed and inequality – as we’ve done together before. Buoyed by the warmth and empathy of the holiday season, let’s make sure that generous gifts arrive where they’re most needed.
With hope and gratitude,
