This was reported in an interview with the Interfax-Ukraine agency by the chairman of the Antimonopoly Committee (AMC) of Ukraine, Oleksiy Kostusev. According to him, such an agreement was reached during AMC negotiations with Western Union regional vice president Kurt Max, chief adviser to the company Chantal Javin, and a group of lawyers who urgently arrived in Ukraine. “They agreed to reduce all fees, but since we insisted specifically on amounts of 100-200 euros, they said that for these amounts the fee would be reduced by at least 40%. For other amounts, the percentage may be lower,” Kostusev clarified.
Company representatives said that in compliance with the AMC recommendations, they had already reduced prices for transfers from Russia to Ukraine by 2.5 times. Before the New Year, Western Union reduced fees for money transfers from US regions with a large number of people originally from Ukraine. “Moreover, they promised to find opportunities in the future to further reduce fees for transferring funds to Ukraine from the United States. They will introduce a service where money transfers to Ukraine will be received not in 15 minutes but in 24 hours with a significant reduction in the fee,” he said.
The AMC chairman also said that during the negotiations, the committee asked the company to pay attention to markets such as Germany, Greece, Czech Republic, Israel, and Poland, where Ukrainian citizens also work. “They agreed and expressed their readiness to study this issue,” he said.
Let us recall that earlier the AMC filed claims against Western Union over fees that Ukrainian antitrust authorities consider inflated. The AMC of Ukraine demanded that fees for money transfers to Ukraine be reduced to an economically justified level. Otherwise, penalties may be applied to the company, which, given the significant market volumes, could reach hundreds of millions of dollars.
In September 2004, Western Union had already agreed to reduce its fees for transfers from Russia to Ukraine by 2.5 times. If earlier transferring $100 from Russia to Ukraine cost $15, since September last year this amount is $6. The Antimonopoly Committee considers this a significant achievement, as about 3 million of our compatriots work in Russia today. Thus, after the fee reduction, Ukrainian families annually retain more than $30 million that the American company previously received.
The AMCU chairman stressed that Western Union's fees for transfers from far abroad are not discriminatorily high for Ukraine. At the same time, they are too high given Western Union's monopoly position in the money transfer market, as well as the rather difficult situation of most Ukrainian citizens forced to earn money abroad. For example, the fee for transfers from Spain is 17%, from Portugal - 16.5%, and from the Czech Republic - 21%. “Many Ukrainians working abroad have no alternative safe way to send money home,” Kostusev admitted.
Money transfer companies such as MoneyGram and Anelik also operate on the Ukrainian market. However, the volume of transfers made through Western Union annually approaches $700 million, which is about 90% of all money transfers to Ukraine.