NEW YORK - There are 151,000 Western Union locations, but the company itself only owns one of them outright, and that one - in Times Square - has been turned into a showcase for technologies that handle money transfers, money orders, and other transactions.
Executives from the First Data Corp. unit held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday at the newly refurbished store, which has been in the same building for more than 40 years and generates more transactions than any other Western Union location.
The place bristles with new high-tech gadgets, such as the Western Union Kiosk. Built by Wincor Nixdorf, it can handle money transfers, money orders, check cashing, and bill payment. Like 7-Eleven Inc.'s Vcom kiosk, it can accept up to 30 bills, in denominations up to $100.
Unlike the Vcom, the Western Union Kiosk photographs customers and their driver's license or ID card and compares the two to authenticate their identity. This technology was developed by Infonox, the kiosk's gateway provider.
The store also houses a prepaid phone center where consumers can buy time for their wireless or regular phone service without necessarily loading a prepaid card.
Michael C. Yerington, the president of Western Union, North America, said his company wants to be "one of the largest providers of prepaid topoff for prepaid cellphones."
Nearby is a currency exchange window plus a parlor of phone booths where people can make international calls. There are also two machines that look like ATMs but are in fact computers that take consumers to WesternUnion.com, where they can make money transfers.
There is an actual ATM in the store, one that can also send money transfers in $20 increments. Finally, there are phones that customers can use to make money transfers through live operators in as many as 17 languages, including Amharic, Tagalog, and Serbo-Croatian.
Despite its display of tech muscle, Western Union knows that most of its customers are blue-collar workers, many of them immigrants, who tend to be wary of new technology and who prefer to speak with a teller. Mr. Yerington offered the caveat: "People know we're high-touch - person-to-person interaction."
The self-service options are in the front of the new store, and customers cannot help passing them to get to the customer service representatives in the back. Debi Buckley, the Western Union retail marketing manager who helped design the store, said the configuration meant that customers "can see [the technology] and experience it and maybe try it out later as they get more comfortable with it."
