I've seen it posted around here but I think this is more of an optimistic hint than anything genuine so I wouldn't pay it too much attention. It could be a good thing but considering that Western Union is an established and long lived bank I don't know if it would be because the paranoid anarchist in me tells me they'd almost certainly try and find a way to spy on your transactions, not that they could in Bitcoin but certainly if you were to transfer paper money to them, I expect if they did ever do it there would be all sorts of restrictions and verification processes they'd force you to go through before you could move any money.

+1 Yes this is huge and a natural application for Western Union.  Let us keep in mind that this is a company with a very long history of reinventing itself in order to remain relevant. They were originally in the telegraph business in the mid 19th century.

Ouch: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=wu&ql=1

I'm still up significantly on WU but what a weird stock. Look at thew graph, the have rather steep slopes upward followed by enormous cliffs. Just like today

A bit weird as they already announced the price reductions (compressing margins extremely to force MoneyGram out of business) and after that the stock went up a lot.

The problem appears to be the company's expectations for 2014 costs to comply with increased legal and regulatory requirements in countries where it does business. Here is what Western Union had to say about these costs:

While the Company has increased its investments in compliance considerably in recent years, significant additional investment in 2014 is now anticipated in light of the current environment and our internal reviews of the increasingly complex and demanding global regulatory requirements. … Western Union expects its compliance related expenses to increase from approximately 2.5% of revenue in 2013 to a range of approximately 3.5% to 4.5% of revenue in 2014, based on preliminary reviews of the programs

Ripple issues a virtual currency known as Ripples, of which it holds a 25 percent slice.

... and the software has recently been open sourced, ...