Mamdani urges New York to block Western Union-Intermex deal

Mayor Zohran Mamdani pressed New York’s top financial regulator to block Western Union’s proposed $500 million purchase of International Money Express, arguing the deal could leave immigrant families paying more to send money home.

In a letter to the New York State Department of Financial Services, Mamdani said the merger would reduce competition in remittances and raise costs for some of the city’s lowest-earning residents. His warning went to the core of a market that many New Yorkers rely on every month: small cross-border transfers to relatives in Latin America, where even a modest fee increase can drain wages that are already stretched by rent, food and transit costs.

Western Union agreed on August 10, 2025, to buy Intermex in an all-cash transaction priced at $16.00 per share, with an enterprise value of about $500 million. Intermex, based in Miami, mainly serves immigrants sending remittances to Latin America. Western Union said the acquisition would strengthen its North America retail presence, broaden Intermex beyond its core Latin America corridors and speed up digital customer acquisition.

The companies said they expected the deal to close in mid-2026, pending remaining regulatory approvals, stockholder approval and customary closing conditions. One major federal hurdle fell away on October 6, 2025, when the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act expired without further action.

Mamdani’s push now shifts the fight to Albany, where the state banking and financial regulator has authority over licensing and other oversight for institutions it supervises. The Department of Financial Services can require licensing, registration, examinations and other compliance steps, giving it a possible lever over remittance businesses even as federal review winds down.

But the mayor’s formal power may be limited. Reporting on the dispute noted that relatively few deals require state or local approval, which could make it difficult for Mamdani to stop the transaction on his own. Still, his challenge turns an otherwise technical merger review into a direct test of whether New York will let a dominant money-transfer company get bigger in a market that serves some of the city’s most financially vulnerable households.