The agreement with Martin McColl represents an excellent opportunity for Western Union to expand its distribution network in the U.K., adding 700 new locations to the existing network of more than 11,000 Agent locations, consisting mainly of high-street retailers and banks.

The agreement with Martin McColl also represents a significant step in Western Union's strategy to expand its network, diversify its customer base, attract mainstream customers to its money transfer service and promote such relatively new services as European and domestic money transfers.

Jan Hillered, Senior Vice President, Europe & CIS at Western Union, said: "Martin McColl has an excellent network of well-known stores in the U.K., and has a particularly strong presence in neighbourhoods outside large cities, where Western Union is currently not prominent. We view the agreement with Martin McColl as an excellent opportunity to expand our U.K. network to these areas and offer more customers the opportunity to experience the speed, convenience and reliability of the Western Union® Money TransferSM service."

Tony Start, Trading Director at Martin McColl said: "We see the introduction of the Western Union Money Transfer service as a key driver in increasing customer footfall and driving incremental income. The introduction of the Western Union® service will complement our initiative of providing a range of financial services to our customer base. We look forward to launching with Western Union in the second quarter."