'Families Shouldn’t Pay the Price' for Monopolies: Mamdani Pushes Regulators to Reject Western Union Merger

Mamdani wrote to the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) late last month, outlets are reporting this week, urging the state financial regulator to block Western Union's 500 million merger with International Money Express, or Intermex. With 4.5 million users, Intermex has a small fraction of Western Union's customer base of 150 million people who use wire transfer services. But Mamdani wrote that over the past decade the smaller company has nearly tripled its share of remittances sent from the United States—transfers of money that immigrants send back to their families in their home countries. In the US-to-Ecuador and US-to-Nicaragua corridors, Intermex’s market shares are 34 and 36, respectively, wrote the mayor, showing that it is winning customers away from Western Union, the historic market leader.With immigrants increasingly using remittances to secure financial stability in case they are swept up in the Trump administration's mass deportation operation, remittances are a crucial lifeline for New Yorkers and their communities abroad, wrote Mamdani. On social media Thursday, Mamdani added that families shouldn’t pay the price for corporate monopolies. He told DFS that maintaining competition between providers of the service keeps prices for families more competitive, encourages compliance with relevant consumer protection and disclosure requirements, and incentivizes reliability.The proposed merger would change that. By eliminating competition between Western Union and Intermex, the deal could lead tohigher fees (including those the businesses may fail to disclose), disadvantageous rates, worse terms, poorer service, and other impacts to these communities, wrote Mamdani, who has centered his agenda as mayor on making New York City more affordable for working families. In short, it would represent a direct wealth transfer—one that would further strain the already challenging economic circumstances facing New York City’s immigrant communities.The mayor noted that immigrants' access to affordable remittance services are already under threat, after the Republican Party's One Big Beautiful Bill Act imposed a 1 excise tax on cash remittance transactions.Now, this merger threatens to impose a new private tax on these same remittances, in the form of higher, supracompetitive prices that will flow directly to Western Union’s corporate coffers, said Mamdani.Responding to the mayor's call for the merger to be blocked, Western Union claimed in a statement to DFS this week that the companies, should they be permitted to merge, would still provide accessible and affordable remittance services. The mayor cited several US Supreme Court rulings that have found corporate mergers that would substantially lessen competition to be illegal and said that despite legal precedent, the Trump administration has declined to challenge the merger on antitrust grounds.But that is not where the story ends, wrote Mamdani. Instead, the deal still requires a series of money transmitter license approvals, including from the New York State Department of Financial Services. The conditions for disapproval are clearly met here, the mayor continued. The transaction is manifestly against the publicinterest, as it would lead to higher fees and worse rates for hard-working, disproportionately immigrant families, across New York City and the state—all to inflate Western Union’s balance sheet.Semafor and The New York Times suggested that the influence of former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan may have pushed the mayor to lobby DFS to reject the merger. Khan is an outside adviser to Mamdani and served as co-chair of his transition team. While working in the Biden administration, Khan blocked and challenged major corporate mergers including Kroger's attempt to acquire Albertsons, Meta's bid to buy virtual reality app company Within, and JetBlue's proposed merger with Spirit Airlines. Daniel Hanley, a senior legal analyst at the anti-monopoly group Open Markets Institute applauded Mamdani's decision to wade into the debate over Western Union's proposed merger.State and local officials can supplement law enforcement, said Hanley, while the federal government abdicates its fiduciary responsibilities.