Why do people use Western Union when they can use PayPal to transfer money?

Couple of reasons... 1. Western Union is available in over 200 countries and territories, PayPal is not. 2. In larger remittance markets (cross-border), Western Union is the preferred method because of the agent network 3. Access to a PayPal account is limited in very many countries. 4. WU is instant. With PayPal you may have a sending/receiving limit and/or time before your account is active. 5. As cited, not everyone has access to computer. Most of WU transfers (especially remittances) are done by blue-collar workers.

In some countries, the problem isn't access to a computer since internet access is surprisingly widespread.  The problem is that there are large parts of the world where people do not have bank accounts and do everything by paper cash. Typically the way this works is that you send the money via Western Union, the money arrives instantly, and then you call the person you are sending the money to verify that they have a stack of bills in hand.

Not everyone has a computer.

1. You cannot transfer money from US PayPal account to China PayPal Account. 2. Only a passcode is needed to retrieve the money. No internet needed at all.

There is an overlap between PP and WU, in some areas. In WU, they do have a website (wu. com)  http://wu.com/, and you can use your online account to send. There is no "holding" balance concept like PP - money has to move from an account (bank or cash) to another account (bank or cash), globally

In world 2.0, why would they go to Western Union or Paypal when they can use https://moneytis.com/?utm_source=quora&utm_medium=comment&utm_campaign=eta&utm_term=ba2&utm_content=why?In the same way you do not go on an airline website to book a flight, same with hotels, you would use Expedia, Booking or the others...

Few reasons: is specializing in international B2C payments and domestic C2C, while is global leader in the international C2C money transfer (aka, ) you could still send money with PayPal but it is typically more expensive than Western Union since PayPal tends to offer a much worse exchange rate Western Union has a solid online-mobile platform in 35 countries (as of February 2016), so its customers, including who like to send money digitally (around 10%) don't need to look elsewhere: Western Union is one of if not the most innovative company in including being the first to partner with and . Those partnership are mutually beneficial since consumers trust Western Union much more than a technology provider when it comes to sending money If you want to learn more about , read our post: https://www.saveonsend.com/blog/western-union-money-transfer/ There is this inaccurate image of as being slow, expensive, and horrible at customer service. None of those are actually true. Western Union went online in 2000, started piloting mobile payments in 2007, had a mobile app in 2011... In order to win market share from Western Union, which is slowly declining toward 10% (see chart below), another provider needs to be fantastically better: By the way, this is exactly why PayPal acquired in 2015 as it realized that it doesn't want to compete with Western Union by jeopardizing its relatively fat margins. For more on that whole debacle, read our analysis: https://www.saveonsend.com/blog/xoom-money-transfer/Digital remittances will remain a relatively small niche for a long time as consumers including millennials simply prefer handling cash and human interaction. Look at the images below - people are staying in lines to pay $4 for lattes or ice cream. Seems like a huge of waste of money and time, but same folks are likely be doing it again and again:

Western Union main target is the unbanked people in poor countries