announced today that it has joined forces with Smart Communications, Inc., a leading wireless services provider in the Philippines, to jointly develop and pilot a Mobile Money Transfer service.

The service, which is being developed as part of the GSM Association’s Mobile Money Transfer strategic initiative, aims to make low-principal, high-frequency remittances available to the country’s more than 8 million Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs).¹

SMART, which ended 2007 with more than 30 million subscribers, already has an established mobile financial service platform linking local bank accounts to mobile handsets, providing significant convenience for banked consumers. At the end of 2007, more than 7 million SMART subscribers were in the Smart Money system, close to 2 million of whom are cardholders. The company has agreements with five Philippine commercial banks and links to over 7,000 ATMs nationwide, more than 100 Smart Wireless Centers and thousands of third-party Smart Money fulfillment partners.

“This agreement is in line with SMART’s thrust to continuously develop convenient mobile remittance channels and communications services for overseas Filipino workers,” said Napoleon Nazareno, SMART president and CEO. “We recognize the significant role they play in not only contributing to the country’s economy, but also in making sure their families’ financial and communications needs are met at the time they need them.”

Western Union, together with its affiliates Orlandi Valuta and Vigo, maintains the industry’s largest global money transfer Agent network with more than 320,000 locations in over 200 countries and territories.

“More than 44 percent of households in the Philippines have a relative or family member working abroad,² and the mobile phone plays a tremendous role in keeping families connected,” said Matt Dill, General Manager, Western Union Mobile. “We believe there is a real opportunity to extend the reach of Western Union’s brand and service proposition to a new and more mobile consumer base.”

The number of immigrants globally is about 200 million – approximately 3 percent of the world’s population.² According to recent World Bank data, the Philippines is the fourth-largest receiver of remittances in the world and received an estimated $17 billion USD in 2007.

Once the Western Union^® mobile money transfer pilot has launched, the service will connect operators to Western Union’s existing global money transfer system. Once connected to the Western Union service, operators will be able to use their own “mobile wallet” software to enable person-to-person mobile money transfers over Western Union’s cross-border remittance network. The Mobile Money Transfer service will enable consumers to transfer money to or from mobile wallets and will offer a global network of Western Union Agent locations for cash-to-mobile and mobile-to-cash transactions.

Mobile networks now cover more than 80 percent of the world’s population, and 3 billion people have a mobile phone,³ creating an opportunity to extend the benefits of financial services to many of the world’s families for the first time.

The agreement with SMART is part of the pilot program of Western Union and the GSM Association, a global trade association representing over 700 GSM mobile phone operators, to facilitate the development of cross-border mobile money transfer services.