Treasury signals faster, safer cross-border payments push
Neiman's cross-border payments remarks put Western Union on notice: faster transfers, clearer fees and tougher AML checks are headed in the same policy lane.
Brent Neiman's Treasury remarks on the U.S. cross-border payments agenda put speed, transparency and illicit-finance controls into the same policy frame, a combination that lands directly on Western Union's pricing, routing and compliance work. Western Union says it operates in more than 200 countries and territories and over 130 currencies, and its 2024 annual-report materials still emphasize digital transaction growth and expanded reach.
The policy direction itself is well established, but the pressure is getting more specific. Treasury has framed cross-border payments reform around lower cost, faster speed, broader access and greater transparency, and the Financial Stability Board set targets around the same four problems. Neiman's Treasury policy page says he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in March 2023 and sworn in to serve as Deputy Undersecretary for International Finance, giving his remarks added weight inside a department that has been public about wanting modernization without loosening safeguards.
That balance matters because Treasury has also warned that faster systems can create new risks. A Treasury-linked Bloomberg report on Nov. 19, 2024 said a senior U.S. Treasury official warned that new cross-border payments systems could threaten financial stability and economic security. Neiman has also been skeptical of products that bypass existing transparent, regulated systems at a Federal Reserve Bank of New York conference. For Western Union employees in product, policy, AML, sanctions and payments engineering, the practical takeaway is clear: the next round of policy pressure is likely to reach fee disclosure, settlement speed, customer identification and the quality of data shared with partners and regulators.
Western Union has already spent years inside that debate. In 2017, Duncan DeVille, the company's Global Head of Financial Crimes Compliance and U.S. BSA Officer, testified before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Terrorism and Illicit Finance about terrorism-financing risk in remittances and money transfers. Western Union also submitted comments to the Financial Stability Board in July 2021 on cross-border payments targets, explicitly engaging the same cost, speed, access and transparency framework that Treasury and global standard-setters are now pushing harder.
The broader policy record shows how long Washington has been working this lane. A House Financial Services Committee hearing in 2007 was titled Remittances: Access, Transparency, and Market Efficiency, and the Financial Stability Board published an annual progress report on cross-border payments on Oct. 9, 2025. The BIS followed in March 2026 with Cross-border payment technologies: innovations and challenges, adding more technical pressure on interoperability, data standards and control design. For Western Union, that means faster money movement will not be enough on its own; the companies that can prove safer transfers at scale will be the ones best positioned when policy turns into enforceable benchmarks.
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