Western Union

Western Union moves cash through an agent network that predates online banking by more than a century. In a broker cashier it is a last-resort method: expensive, manual, and offered mainly where cards, wires and wallets all fail.

How it is used

The broker supplies the beneficiary details, you pay in cash or by card at an agent or online, and you send the broker the tracking number — the MTCN — plus the sender's exact name. The broker's finance team matches the payment manually and credits the account, which takes hours rather than seconds and only during business hours. Nothing about this is automatic, which is why the method has largely disappeared.

The costs

• The transfer fee is a percentage that rises steeply for smaller amounts, and it is visible.
• The exchange rate margin is larger than the fee and is not itemised. Compare the amount that will actually arrive, not the headline charge.
• Nothing about the payment is reversible once collected.

Withdrawals

No mainstream broker pays profits out by Western Union — the anti-money-laundering exposure of pushing cash into an agent network is unacceptable to any regulated firm. Money deposited this way comes back by bank transfer to an account in your name, so you need that account regardless. If a broker does offer cash payout, treat it as a serious warning sign rather than a convenience.

Cautions

Western Union transfers are the standard instrument of investment fraud precisely because they cannot be recalled. A legitimate broker asks you to pay its corporate beneficiary details; a scam asks you to send money to an individual, often described as an account manager or a local representative. Never send to a personal name. If the only funding route a firm offers is a cash transfer to a person, the payment method is not the problem — the firm is.