Good day, and welcome to The Western Union Company Second Quarter 2020 Earnings Release Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star then zero on your telephone keypad. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brendan Metrano, Vice President, Investor Relations at Western Union. Please go ahead.
Thank you. On today's call, we will discuss the company's results for the second quarter of 2020. Then we will take your questions. The slides that accompany this call and webcast can be found at westernunion.com under the Investor Relations tab and will remain available after the call. Additional operational statistics have been provided in supplemental tables with our press release. Western Union is still following the work-from-home policy. On our remote call today is our CEO, Hikmet Ersek, our CFO, Raj Agrawal, and Head of Treasury and Investor Relations, Brad Windbigler. Today's call is being recorded. Our comments include forward-looking statements. Please refer to the cautionary language in the earnings release and in Western Union's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the 2019 Form 10-K for additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements.
During the call, we will discuss some items that do not conform to generally accepted accounting principles. We have reconciled those items to the most comparable GAAP measures on our website, westernunion.com, under the Investor Relations section. We will also discuss certain adjusted metrics. Although the expenses that have been excluded from adjusted metrics are specific to these initiatives, the types of expenses may be similar to types of expenses the company has previously incurred and can reasonably be expected to incur in the future. All statements made by Western Union officers on this call are the property of The Western Union Company and subject to copyright protection. Other than the replay noted in our press release, Western Union has not authorized and disclaims responsibility for any recording, replay, or distribution of any transcription of this call. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Hikmet Ersek.
Thank you, Brendan. Thank you all for joining our earnings call this afternoon. We hope you and your families are safe and well during these unprecedented times. On today's call, Raj and I will discuss the company's performance during the second quarter, underlying business conditions, and plans to drive our growth strategy forward. As you all are aware, the second quarter continued to be a tiring time for people around the world facing the COVID-19 pandemic. At the onset of the pandemic, Western Union took swift action to support the safety and well-being of all our stakeholders, with a focus on Western Union employees and customers, but also our agent partners and the communities we operate in. We continue to operate with the same diligence. In addition, during the quarter, concerns over social justice came to the forefront globally.
Western Union has long stood for values of equity and inclusion, which are core to our mission as a global, socially conscious company with a diverse customer base and workforce. For details about our holistic COVID-19 response and Western Union social values, please refer to our annual ESG report published in June and available on Western Union investor relations website. Let me tell you that I am personally proud and humbled to lead a company with these values. Now, let me give you some color on business performance. On our first quarter earnings call in May, we noted that COVID-19 had caused a sudden and steep decline in our business in the later part of March and early April and led us to withdraw our 2020 financial outlook. I'm pleased to say that since then, our business began to bounce back.
Our C2C segment finished the quarter with solid transaction growth of 6% in June, which increased to 10% in July. In fact, our C2C cross-border principal increased 3% on a constant currency basis in the second quarter. For June, our C2C cross-border principal grew over 20%, which also carried into July. For the first half of the year, our cross-border principal grew 2% constant currency. This starkly contrasts with the World Bank forecast for a 20% decline in remittances for 2020, which we believe indicates that we are winning in the marketplace for both retail and digital money transfers. This isn't surprising to us. We have invested substantially over the past decade to build a leading omnichannel platform for cross-border cost- currency money transfers and payments. Western Union can deliver money and payments effectively through multiple channels to more places than anyone else in our space.
The disruptive impact of the current environment has actually enhanced the competitive advantage of our combined physical and digital capabilities. When COVID-19 hit. We were ready with a proven digital platform when consumers and clients sought fast, convenient, and reliable methods to transfer money on their smartphone or computer. This enabled strong digital customer acquisition with westernunion.com monthly average active customer up 45% year-over-year. According to the mobile marketing firm Sensor Tower, we are leading significantly in downloads of westernunion.com mobile app compared with the peer money transfer companies. The strong momentum of westernunion.com, combined with acceleration in digital partnership transactions, drove 50% constant currency digital revenue growth for the second quarter to approximately $220 million. Digital-initiated transactions accounted for 31% of C2C segment transactions, up from 15% in the second quarter of 2019.
Importantly, this digital growth is largely incremental to our business and has strong profit and customer lifetime value. Customers also knew they could turn to Western Union to send money virtually anywhere with confidence, given the quality of our network. Most of our agents are well-established essential businesses, like financial institutions, postal institutions, or large retailers. The large majority of our agent locations have been open and able to serve customers during the crisis, unlike some other providers. Our research shows the availability of our platform was one of the reasons money transfer consumers switched to Western Union during the quarter. Our resilience over the second quarter shows the strong fundamentals of our business, which combined with the new growth strategy we laid out at the Investors Day last September, positions Western Union for profitable long-term growth.
For the second quarter, revenues declined 11% on an adjusted constant currency basis, but grew in June. While the digital business demonstrates impressive results, retail trends got better over the quarter and drove monthly improvement in overall C2C trends. We continued to deliver solid profitability with adjusted operating margins of 20.4% due to targeted productivity savings and expense management enabled by the WU Way Lean program and organizational efficiencies. We generated healthy cash flow, returned capital to shareholders through our quarterly dividend, and continued to maintain a strong financial position. Our business is moving in the right direction. Consumer behavior appears to be relatively stable, and the macro environment has improved from the significant drop off in March and April. However, there is still uncertainty from COVID-19, evidenced by concerns of second and even third waves in some markets.
We think these conditions warrant continued caution and therefore we are not issuing 2020 financial targets at this time. Raj will provide a detailed review of our financial results and offer some additional insights into our expectations in a few minutes. Looking forward, we have a robust agenda for the second half of the year that should help position the company to emerge from this disruptive time in a very strong competitive position. We will continue to focus on three key objectives of our new strategy, driving digital growth, enhancing our global network, and optimizing our organization. The current environment has benefited the Branded Digital money transfer market and not just from retail customer switching. It is also bringing in new consumers to the market, some from informal channels or banking system, and others with recently developed needs.
To keep the westernunion.com momentum going, we will continue to invest in acquiring new customers and enhancing services like real-time payments. Third-party partnerships have been a big contributor to our digital money transfer business this year. Offering our unique cross-border, cross-currency platform to third parties gives us an access to a previously untapped segment of the remittance market that currently relies on correspondent banks. While the sales cycle is somewhat longer than agent signings, we have strong pipeline of potential business focused on financial institutions and the team dedicated to capturing this exciting long-term growth opportunity. Moving on to network. We continue to enhance our industry-leading diverse global distribution network.
Far this year, we have renegotiated agreements with nearly 150 existing agents with more than 125,000 locations, added over 60 new agents with 16,000 locations, and increased our real-time account payout capabilities to over 60 countries at the end of June. We also added additional wallet and card capabilities. I am pleased with the progress here, and we will continue to focus on improving the coverage, cost, and quality of our network. In business solutions, we continue to evaluate new ways to help businesses address their need for cross-border services. We also continue to develop our payment network and make progress on our Edge platform that will enable customers to digitally self-serve. On the organization efficiency front, our WU Way Lean and effective management mindset has enabled good progress in creating a more effective organization.
We are on pace to deliver at least $50 million in annual productivity savings we targeted for this year, as well as the three-year target of $150 million. In closing, I am very pleased with our performance under challenging circumstances in the second quarter. While macro uncertainty remains, we are focused on serving our customers globally and executing against our growth agenda for this year. Looking at longer term, we are well-positioned in a resilient market with a strong financial position, and we are pursuing a growth strategy that will enable us to drive meaningful, profitable growth for years to come. With that, I will turn the call over to Raj.
Thank you, Hikmet. Good afternoon, everyone. My comments today will start with the second quarter performance of our business. Then I'll offer some thoughts on our expectations for the remainder of the year. As Hikmet discussed earlier, we faced a challenging business environment in the second quarter. We are encouraged to see faster improvement in our business than we expected just a few months ago, accentuated by positive consumer transaction growth and very strong cross-border principal growth in June and July. Second quarter revenue of $1.1 billion declined 17% compared to the prior year period. While adjusted constant currency revenue, which excludes the 2019 divestitures, declined 11%. Currency translation, net of the impact from hedges, reduced second quarter revenue by approximately $46 million compared to the prior year, primarily due to the depreciation of the Argentine peso.
In the consumer-to-consumer segment, revenue declined 12%, or 11% on a constant currency basis, due to the transaction declines and other mix impacts. Transaction declined 8% for the quarter, driven by decreases in the retail business, which were primarily attributable to reduced consumer mobility resulting from COVID-19. Retail transaction declines were partially offset by the exceptional growth in digital money transfer, which I'll elaborate on shortly. Drilling down into the business. As conditions stabilized and economies began to reopen over the quarter, we saw substantial and broad improvement in trends across our geographies and channels. We ended with 6% transaction growth in June and carried on with 10% in July, which was somewhat bolstered by a holiday benefit. Total C2C cross-border principal increased 1% on a reported basis or 3% constant currency, with principal per transaction or PPT up 7% or 9% constant currency.
The increase in PPT was primarily due to higher PPT in our retail business, which we believe was largely due to a shift in customer mix and changes in customer behavior. Changes in the mix of our digital money transfer business also contributed to the higher PPT, notably more account-to-account transactions and digital partnership transactions. The spread between C2C transactions and revenue growth in the quarter was 4%, or 3% constant currency, which is largely attributable to mix shifts in our business from faster growth of certain digital transactions with lower yields. Digital money transfer revenues, including westernunion.com and digital partnerships, increased 48%, or 50% constant currency, and accounted for 22% of total C2C revenue and 31% of C2C transactions in the quarter. The spread between digital revenue and transaction growth was attributable to a greater mix of digital partnerships and strategic pricing actions for westernunion.com.
We continue to drive forward with our dynamic pricing strategy, which focuses on agile pricing capabilities to drive more customers, transactions, and revenue over the long term. westernunion.com revenue grew 33%, or 34% constant currency, with cross-border revenue up approximately 48%, partially offset by continued domestic declines. westernunion.com transactions increased 50%. Our digital partnership business continued to gain momentum in the quarter as transactions ramped up in our digital white label business. Turning to the regional results. In most geographies and channels, trends improved sequentially from lows in April to June and into July. North America revenue declined 6% on a reported basis and 5% on a constant currency basis, and transactions declined 7%. Both revenue and transaction trends improved steadily each month throughout the quarter. U.S. outbound growth was largely offset by declines in domestic money transfer, with digital continuing to drive the results.
U.S. domestic money transfer continued to weigh on revenue results. It's only 5% of total company revenues now and will likely be less meaningful over time. Revenue in the Europe and CIS region decreased 10% on a reported basis or 9% constant currency. Transactions grew 4% due to strength in Russia benefiting from the Sberbank partnership. Strong digital growth was more than offset by retail declines. However, we are encouraged to see retail transaction trends improve throughout the quarter. Indeed, some countries, including Germany and Switzerland, even had transaction trends that were better than pre-COVID. It seems that Europe is benefiting from a strong social safety net in many countries, which should help to maintain stability along with strong customer acquisition. Revenue in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia region decreased 13% or 12% constant currency and transactions declined 1%.
The spread between revenue and transaction growth was attributable to strong growth in Saudi Arabia, driven by our partnership with Saudi Telecom. The UAE experienced softening trends as service-related industries slowed in the quarter. Revenue in Latin America and Caribbean region decreased 45% on a reported basis or 35% constant currency, on transaction declines of 41%. Declines in the region were due to restrictive government policy responses in many countries. We anticipate that recovery in this region may lag due to a later onset of COVID-19, more restrictive government policy responses, and a smaller social safety net in many countries. Revenue in the APAC region declined 14% on a reported basis or 13% constant currency on transaction declines of 18%. On a positive note, Australia, which is an important market, grew both revenue and transactions in the quarter, including for retail.
Business solutions revenue decreased 17% on a reported basis or 15% constant currency and represented 7% of company revenues in the quarter. Revenue declines were the result of softening trends in verticals with more exposure to COVID-19, including education, travel and tourism, and small, medium-sized enterprises. Other revenues represented 5% of total company revenues and declined 56% in the quarter. The decline was largely due to the 2019 divestitures, the impact of COVID-19, and depreciation of the Argentine peso. Other revenues primarily consist of retail bill payments in both Argentina and the U.S., as well as money orders. Turning to margins and profitability, I will focus on consolidated margins as segment margins are not comparable with the prior year period due to the divestitures and expense allocation changes implemented in the first quarter of 2020.
Consolidated GAAP operating margin was 19.9% in the quarter compared to 19.3% in the prior year period. The increase was primarily due to productivity savings and additional cost management measures, partially offset by revenue declines associated with COVID-19 and the 2019 divestitures. Additional cost savings realized in the quarter reflect both the timing of certain expenses and specific actions, such as delaying hiring, limiting travel, and reprioritizing investments. We incurred $5 million in restructuring related expenses in the second quarter related to our productivity program. We continue to expect total restructuring-related expenses of approximately $150 million, and to date, we have incurred $131 million. Adjusted operating margin in the second quarter was 20.4% compared to 20.3% in the prior year period, with expansion driven by the same factors stated previously and adjusted for restructuring and M&A costs.
Foreign exchange hedges provided a benefit of $7 million in the current quarter and a benefit of $6 million in the prior year period. The GAAP effective tax rate was 16.2% in the quarter compared to 17.5% in the prior year period, while the adjusted tax rate was 15.7% compared to 16.8% in the prior year period. The decrease in GAAP and adjusted effective tax rates was primarily due to the effect of the 2019 divestitures. GAAP earnings per share in the quarter was $0.39 compared to $1.42 in the prior year period. The decrease is primarily attributable to the gain on sale from the divestitures in 2019 and to a lesser extent current year revenue declines associated with COVID-19 and other divestitures. Partial offsets include productivity savings, additional cost management measures, and lower share count in the current year period.
Adjusted earnings per share in the quarter was $0.41 compared to $0.45 in the prior year period, with the decrease due to the factors stated previously and adjusted for the gain on sale and restructuring and M&A costs. Turning to our cash flow and balance sheet, year-to-date cash flow from operating activities was $348 million. Capital expenditures in the quarter were approximately $49 million. At the end of the quarter, we had cash of $1.2 billion and debt of $3.1 billion. Our financial position is among the strongest in the industry. We have an undrawn $1.5 billion revolving credit facility and no significant debt maturities until 2022. We returned nearly $93 million in dividends to shareholders in the second quarter, and the share repurchase program was on pause.
The outstanding share count at quarter end was 411 million shares, and we have $783 million remaining under our share repurchase authorization, which expires in December 2021. Moving to our 2020 business update. As Hikmet mentioned, we will not be providing an outlook at this time, but instead we'll provide some perspective on the second half of the year. We consider a variety of forecasts to inform our understanding of the economic environment and how it will impact revenue generation. We think the prevailing macro outlook for gradual improvement over the second half of 2020 is a reasonable baseline for the business. However, we anticipate some quarterly variation related to grow-over in the digital white label business and strategic pricing actions taken in the second half of 2019. Additionally, we recognize that recovery may not be linear in certain geographies.
For our C2C segment, we expect the overall remittance market will be down for the year. However, the World Bank's current for 2020 forecast, which calls for a 20% decline in total cross-border principal, appears too pessimistic. Our total cross-border principal grew 2% on a constant currency basis in the first half of the year and grew over 20% in June and July. Based on these trends, we think we're gaining share in the market. Lastly, for our business solutions segment, we consider global trade forecasts in our projections, and the prevailing view calls for gradual improvement in the second half of the year. Moving to margins, we believe that we can deliver solid margins in the second half of the year despite softer revenue trends. As we mentioned last quarter, we have a flexible cost structure.
55%-60% of our costs are variable and 40%-45% are fixed. Additionally, we are still on track to reach at least $50 million in cost savings in 2020 and may realize more based on recent shifts in timing of initiatives and investments. We continue to target $150 million in annual cost savings through 2022. Furthermore, we will manage costs appropriately with the revenue environment. For example, we increased marketing investment in westernunion.com from the first quarter to the second quarter to address the growing digital opportunity. If business trends continue to improve, investments could potentially increase in the back half of the year. Finally, we expect both the GAAP and its adjusted effective tax rate to be in the mid-teens range for 2020.
To recap, we are pleased with our results in this quarter in a very challenging environment, delivering solid margins and positive transaction growth for June, which continued into July. We see these as major wins given the current backdrop and believe it indicates we are broadly outperforming the competition. Moreover, we think the exceptional performance of the digital business this quarter confirms the digitally-focused strategy we laid out last year and has us on the right path to drive durable, long-term value for all our stakeholders. Thank you for joining our call today, and operator, we are now ready to take questions.
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Tien-tsin Huang of JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for all the details. If you can hear me, I have no Wi-Fi here. I'm trying to think about how to ask this quickly. Transaction growth 6% and 10% in June and July sounds like principal growth is up 2% the first half of the year, but you're expecting it to be down for the full year. I'm just trying to think about that dynamic and ask maybe, is there a danger to assume the 6-ish% continues there into the third quarter? I'm just trying to think about why that might not be a good proxy for the near term.
Hey, Tien-tsin. It's Raj. Let me just try to address a couple of points there. On the cross-border principal growth, the World Bank is at -20%. We think that's quite pessimistic. We're not going to be at -20%. We think that the market will decline this year, but there are wide range of estimates on where that will be. Contrast that with what we're experiencing. In the first half of the year, we grew low single digits in our cross-border principal, and that was up over 20% growth in June and in July on the cross-border principal. That's what leads us to believe that we're heading in a very different direction from a principal growth standpoint. On transaction growth, June was 6%, July was 10% .
July did benefit from some holiday impact but it was pretty consistent if you adjust for that to what we saw in June. What we did say, and I said in my comments, that in the second half of the year, we'll get some natural grow-over from the digital white label business, which began largely in the third quarter then more so in the fourth quarter. We're also continuing to do our dynamic pricing behind the wu.com business, which obviously is translating into a lot of customer acquisition, a lot of revenue. We had higher pricing in Q4 of last year, particularly in dot com, so that's also going to grow-over in the second half of this year. We're still going to get very strong transaction growth and we feel very good about where the year is going thus far.
Okay. Got you. As my follow-up, just the white label business, which you just alluded to, Raj. That was pretty big. It doubled sequentially, I think. Big performance there. I know the comps are going to get a little tougher, but I think, Hikmet, you talked about a pipeline. I'm just curious if you can maybe quantify that or give us a little bit more detail. Is it more bank-oriented partnerships or tech partners or telecom partners? Just anything else you can share there would be great. Thank you.
Sure. We are very happy with the performance of our white label. It's a new business for us. It's an incremental business for us.
It adds incremental transactions. We are really happy with the performance. We did add some white label partners, and the performance takes time that the new partners also contribute to that success. The main success comes from the existing partners, but the new partners like in South Korea and Japan, we added. We have also a pipeline of adding new. These are mostly, as you said, Tien-tsin, these are mostly financial institutions, where we believe that we have a better service than the correspondent banking opportunity, and the team is dedicated on that. Also financial institutions with telecom background, like wallets, are also interested in our white labeling on our platform to serve their customer in a better way. I'm excited. Jean Claude Farah and his team are doing a good job to get new partners here.
The sales cycle is a little bit longer here than signing an agent, because as a financial institution, you have to adapt your systems to our systems, and it takes a little bit longer. Exciting opportunity.
Right. Great. Thank you for the update.
Thanks, Tien-tsin.
The next question comes from Darrin Peller of Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Thanks. Nice to see these trends. I want to hone in on the mix on the digital versus the cash or the retail side. It looks like these customers are new customers coming to your business. If we think about that, what is it, 30% of transactions on digital driving your overall transaction growth to the high single digits. Looks like there's about a four-point spread between transactions and revenue. Should we be counting on just a more sustainable, higher growth profile for transactions now into the second half and longer term? In other words, are these customers that have come on, are they actually new to your business from other single card or players or banks? Is there any reason why you're not going to keep having a, call it 30% mix on digital?
Yeah. Hey, Darrin, this is Raj. Yeah, we're very excited about digital growth. It really is going even beyond what we had initially expected coming into this year, so we're very pleased there. A couple key data points, and then I'll get back to your mix question. 80% of the new customers that are visiting us on wu.com, which is the lion's share of digital, continue to be new to Western Union. They have not used us in the past couple of years. It's largely a new customer. They seem to be either new customers to category, so they haven't used money transfer before, they haven't identified themselves that way, or they're coming from other parts of the remittance market, maybe from the banks or other digital players. It seems to be a very high-quality customer. They're sending high principal amounts per transaction.
They also seem to be transacting at a high level of, or at least at the same level that we have our current customers. As we've surveyed them, most of them have said that they're going to continue to utilize Western Union in the future, as their needs are there. Sorry, we have some jets flying over here. On the mix question, I think you're going to continue to see transactions grow faster than revenue just because of the digital white label mix and the overall wu.com mix on the overall business. We're pleased with the overall trends and some of it's going to depend also, Darrin, on how fast the retail business comes back, right? That has a different mix impact. That's the part that's also interesting.
Although digital is driving a lot of the growth here and recovery, it is also coming from recovery and retail because digital has stayed in the 100% range for the last few months. Retail has been steadily gaining back where it was before.
Okay. It does seem like the mix, assuming retail is coming back, the mix could stay a little more positioned towards digital than really you've ever had before by a pretty decent amount. I guess I'd be curious to know, number one, how much you think stimulus has helped that trend, and maybe just the overall transaction trend into maybe May and June and even into July, perhaps. Maybe just remind us lastly of the yield differential that you guys calculate between wu.com and your traditional retail business. I know the bank side, the white label is lower, but really wu.com I think is the lion's share. Thanks, guys.
Yeah. Hikmet, do you want to start first and then I can take it?
Yeah. I'll take the macro part. You may get yield part, Raj. Is that okay?
Sure.
We like the government actions, obviously, which helps the economy and helps people who need money, obviously. We don't see the big difference. When we ask the customers, they are here to support them. We ask the customers, it doesn't have direct impact with the stimulus packages to their sending principles. I think we ask them, they support their loved ones, and that's great. The new customer acquisition, as earlier mentioned, they do have an impact to our higher principal amount, and they are new customers, and they have a different behavior. They are newer segments, which is great. It's incremental. They do send higher principal. Stimulus packages generally are good. It may have a little impact, but I wouldn't say that the performance based on stimulus package.
I believe that in this times like this, the customers are looking for a trusted brand. They are looking for a network which is globally everywhere. That's why we are gaining here I believe market share. Raj, you want to.
Yeah. A couple of additional key data points there. The digital business in total in this quarter was about 22% of consumer revenues, that's up 900 basis points from where it was a year ago in the same quarter. While that growth has taken place, the overall margins for the company have obviously expanded slightly. Just keep that in your mind as I describe some of the economics here, which can be quite attractive to Western Union. The unit economics on the westernunion.com site, which is the lion's share of digital, are actually quite similar to what we have in retail. You have averages of how you send the money, how you're funding it, and where you're paying out and the corridors involved.
The dollar contribution on a gross margin basis and the percentage contribution are very similar between retail and digital and our wu.com business because we really look at the marketing spend that we're having here as really an enterprise-wide spend. That marketing spend overall has been shifted more towards digital, but it hasn't really increased for the overall company. The profitability of wu.com is very strong. On digital white label, we really are playing a different role. We're a processor in the transaction. We're not paying for the acquisition of customers. We're not paying for the fraud losses. We're really getting a customer delivered that has good funds that wants to move money. It's a lower starting point from a revenue per transaction standpoint for us, but we also have much less in terms of cost.
It ends up being a very high margin, at least with the examples we have thus far on the digital white label side. Very high profitability on both those businesses, largely incremental, and that's why you're seeing the overall results that we have for the company.
Next question comes from Jason Kupferberg of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, this is Cassie on for Jason. First, I just wanted to ask a little bit more, get a little more color about the growth within the specific corridors or geographies. I know you guys said a sort of broad-based strength, but just wanted to know trends specifically in Europe or North America. On that same thread, I kind of wanted to ask if you potentially see any threat of trends reversing, especially for some areas where economies are potentially reclosing or policies are being more restrictive. Thank you.
Sure. Yeah, just in terms of trends because we have a global business, we see different trends in different parts of the world. Generally, I would say we saw broad-based improvement through the course of the quarter. Each month, we saw successive improvement across most of our key geographies as well as most of our key channels. That's the backdrop of what we're talking about. Some regions, like Latin America, did not perform as well as others because they were later to see the COVID-19 issue and their economic situation there was not as strong, if you will, going in. They also improved during the course of the quarter. In Europe, as I had mentioned, Germany and Switzerland actually did better than we were seeing before COVID-19 even hit. I think in terms of how trends will continue, we'll see.
June and July were certainly similar in nature and quite stable. Digital has trended in the 100% range from a transaction standpoint for quite some time now for the last few months, and retail has been improving since then. We're not giving an outlook because there are still some uncertainties in terms of COVID-19 and a second or third wave and how that might hit, and we just need to see how the economic situation around the world plays out. But we're very pleased, and I think the cross-border principal growth is really strong. In June and July, it was well over 20%. I think that's a very big positive here, and it really speaks to our gaining share in this space.
Yeah, thanks. Just following up on that, I know you're not giving an outlook, but just wanted to know sort of some of the puts and takes that we should think about for 3Q and 4Q. Some of the restructuring should get some benefit in the back half of the year. Can we expect sequential revenue growth and margin growth going forward? Still expecting revenue growth to lag transaction growth? Just a little bit more detail. Thank you.
Sure. Yeah. I think as I mentioned in my comments, we will see some grow-over impact on the digital business because of the growth that we had in the second half of last year. That's where they began for the most part. That's going to certainly have a grow-over impact. The margins, I think it's hard to say. It just depends on the revenue picture. We can certainly control the cost side, and we're doing very well on the cost side, but the revenue will be a key determinant on where margins go. Regardless, based on the year-to-date experience in margins, we think we're going to deliver solid margins for the full year. The exact level is going to be obviously dependent on revenue and where that comes out.
The next question comes from Rayna Kumar of Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.
Good evening. Thanks for taking my question. It's really good to see that 50% digital money transfer revenue growth. I was just wondering, a lot of your competition has also called out strength in digital. Paysafe calling out some solid results from Xoom, Euronet and MoneyGram also speaking about strength in digital. Now that you're also seeing sustained digital growth, could you talk a little bit about what distinguishes your digital platform versus your competitors?
Sure. Let me take that one, Raj. Feel free to add something on that. Great question, actually. If you look at our business, we are obviously moving money cross-border, cross-currency, and we have probably the unique platform to move that, being present in 200 countries. Our digital send function is in 75 countries. Nobody has that, to my understanding, worldwide. That gives us the very strong diversification of our portfolio and growth. We are definitely growing with 50%. It's a great growth, please do understand also, if you compare it with other competitors, alone in 2019, we already had $600 million revenue. We are growing from a huge base already, and we are growing very strong, and I believe that we are leading here the industry. We are specialist on cross-border, cross-currency. As you know, so are domestic. We are not that specialist on that.
Our U.S. domestic money transfer business is only 6% of our total revenue, and it's declining. The cross-border is growing very fast, and this is where our strength is. Besides that, also our white labeling is growing very fast, adding huge transaction growth to our digital growth. We are very satisfied with that. Why are we different than the competition? Look, we have a payout network. This is unique. We have 550,000 locations, so you can send money from New York immediately from your mobile phone, and somebody in Bangladesh, in Dhaka, can pick up in that moment money in their local currency in cash. You can send money from Australia, somebody in Argentina can get it on an account. You can send money from Finland, somebody in New Zealand get it in an account.
I think the diversification of our portfolio, 550,000 locations, billions of accounts, and in real-time, makes a big difference. That takes time to build that. Competition has huge way to get there. It will take them time, and that makes us unique.
That's very helpful. Just as a follow-up, at your Investor Day, you spoke heavily about your dynamic pricing initiatives. Can you talk a little bit about what changes you've seen in your transaction growth directly tied to this initiative? Also, are there any other corridors or channels where you plan on implementing dynamic pricing in the near term? Thank you.
Yeah. I think we have good results on dynamic pricing. We could see that the customers are really shopping, looking at around, and the dynamic pricing really helps us. As you know, the prices have been very stable over the few quarters, and I think, obviously, our business has been, from pricing side, very stable. The people really like it. You could see that also from app downloads, mobile app downloads. We are leading the industry by far, as you could see from the market research there as we present on the slides. I think dynamic pricing, brand trust helps us to position us in a different way than the competition. We do corridor pricing, we do channel pricing, we do street corner pricing, we do ethnic pricing, we will do promotion pricing, we do holiday pricing. That's in 200 countries, 40,000 corridors.
This is driven really by very good intelligence, and we are advancing that month by year and really diversifying our portfolio with dynamic pricing.
One other place you can see it, Rayna, directly is the customer growth we had in wu.com. We had average monthly active customers go up by 45% from last year. That really is a great result of our dynamic pricing, where we want to make sure we get that last customer transacting with us. It really is showing up in the customer growth as well.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from James Faucette of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you very much. Appreciate all the color and detail on kind of the ebbs and flows and the dynamic nature of traffic, particularly over the last few months. I'm wondering, as you look at those traffic and traffic patterns, where you're seeing kind of a resumption of previous patterns that you can identify. Really as well, how are you thinking about the things you would like to see or need to see in order to identify new ones, especially given how dynamic all the current environment is?
Yeah, James, let me start, and maybe, Hikmet, you can add in there. I think we're in a period of a few months here where we really have not seen things be the way they used to because we've seen a significant acceleration of digital. Most customers coming to digital are still new to Western Union, and they're actually transacting in high principal amounts. They're transacting at least at the level, if not higher, in terms of number of transactions per customer. I think that's very interesting for us. We've grown active average customers more than we've seen in the past. We have mobile app downloads that are way above what we've seen from some of our peers. All those things are new to us. We love it, but it's really going in the right direction.
With the PPT level in the retail side, the principal per transaction grew more than we've seen in quite some time. That certainly speaks to the higher income senders sending more money than they historically continuing to send money because they have the ability to. We have new customers coming into the category that are also of that type, so it changes the mix. We're getting a lot more account payout too, which is higher principal amount. Those are some of the things that have changed, and it hasn't really dropped back to normal, if you will. That's something that we're very excited about, what we've seen in the last couple of months.
Yeah. One thing also, maybe James just add on that. Look, this week, COVID-19 environment is definitely different environment, this didn't happen to us suddenly, right? We were ready with our acquiring new customers. As you know pre-COVID-19, we had very strong growth on our digital business already. The COVID-19, obviously, environment, brought us new customers, which they looked for trust, coverage, and new type of customers, which they say that, "Okay, how can I send money now to my loved ones?" Right? The first thing, as you could see that from mobile app downloads and from Google search, the first thing they saw was immediately Western Union, and that brought us new customers. It's the right direction because we were ready with our digital money transfer.
Got it. I'm wondering if you can speak to it. You highlighted a little bit what's going on in Europe and in other places, but I'm wondering if there's anything that you can draw in terms of correlation at least, or maybe causation in terms of different openings or closings of regions and what the impact is on corridor behavior, and anything that could be drawn from that perhaps.
Let me start, Raj. You may add one thing. First of all, most of our locations seen as an essential business. If you compare us with the competition, most of our locations have been open because our retail locations are banks, post offices, and big retailers seen as an essential services. There were some lockdowns, country lockdowns, curfews you couldn't get out of that. That impacted our business. Generally, after April, you could see that these customers came back. Regional, I would say that Europe is in a, as Raj mentioned earlier, like Germany or Austria this kind, Switzerland, they had a better growth rate before COVID-19. Part of them, they are new customers, even in the retail. Part of them are coming to us because they don't see it at the level they can send money with their existing methods. Some of the competition had some issues here.
On the regional area, I would say that Saudi Arabia and the Middle East area helped us a lot with our white labeling. Europe is really recovering everywhere in digital growing very strong. Also in retail coming strong. U.S. outbound has been very strong and all has been a positive one. Latin America has been as a small, about 6% of our total send revenue. It's a small part of that. Also Asia is a small part of that. Main regions like the Gulf outbound, Europe outbound, and North America outbound has been doing really good and recovering in a very fast pace. Raj, you want to add something?
No, I think you covered most of it.
The next question comes from Ashwin Shirvaikar of Citi. Please go ahead.
Hey, Hikmet. Hi, Raj. Hope you can hear me.
Hi, Ashwin.
Yeah. How are you?
Good. I'm good. Without power and internet, but you know.
I heard.
Thank you for joining.
Sure. Absolutely. I guess the question is, as I look at your best performing geos from a transaction growth perspective, in terms of pretty good turnaround in those like European, CIS, Middle East, South Asia. What I heard was there's the large difference between transaction growth and revenue growth is something that you would have expected because of the progress of white-label partners. Are there any kind of volume thresholds or anything on those sorts of partners where you can maybe close the gap? Can you tell us about the progression of how some of these work as they get bigger?
Yeah. Don't think about it in terms of closing the gap, Ashwin, because as I described earlier, westernunion.com and digital white label are very profitable to Western Union, and it's largely incremental business. We can compare it to other components, but as we add incremental business, it's incremental revenues and profits to Western Union. We play a very different role. If you look at the top line or revenue per transaction in digital white label, it's going to naturally be lower than the rest of our business because of the processor role that we're playing. Because we don't have the customer acquisition costs. We don't have the fraud losses, other expenses in doing that kind of business. It really is a good customer that's being delivered to us that we are moving money for, and the rest of that process is relatively low cost.
It ends up being a very high margin. The dollar contribution is going to be different than the rest of our business from the white label, but some of them actually are quite profitable and not too far away from the rest of our business. I think it just depends, and we look at it really as being good incremental business for Western Union, not really about closing the gap, because I'm not sure what you mean by close. There's not a gap to close. It's a different business model completely than what we have.
Understood. Purely processing. Got that.
Yeah.
On the business solutions segment where you've, over the last couple of years, done a pretty good job lowering the cost base and cost structure there. To what extent is the current impact, business shutdowns in terms of what's the outlook there? Because I feel like the incremental margins there, if the volume comes back, can be pretty good. You're pretty much operating at where your fixed cost base is right now. Can you talk a little bit about the outlook there?
I can talk general about the environment, how the environment is. Raj, you can add on the cost side maybe. General, I would say that business solution had, as you said earlier, a good run. They did get impacted by the COVID-19 impact, especially some parts of the verticals, like the student pay had some impact because of the lower applications for international students studying because of COVID-19. Some import/export had impact. I have to say that also in the business solution, we started to see improvement coming to the light, but it's still in the challenging environment on the business solution. I would say that the import/export environment has been challenging within the COVID-19, as any industry has it.
Yeah. On the margin side, Ashwin, you're absolutely right. As the business performs and as we get revenue growth there, given the structure of the costs that are more heavily fixed in that business than other parts of our business, we should start to see that improvement again. I would say that margin performance overall, when you look at it on a year-to-date basis, is actually around the 19% range in terms of EBITDA margins. It's not where it was for the full year last year, but it's also not that down given everything that we've experienced. Yeah, as we get better revenue growth, we should have better profit performance there as well.
Next question comes from Jeff Cantwell of Guggenheim Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I appreciate all the new data you're giving us, and I appreciate you sharing some of your July numbers as well. I just had a follow-up question on your wu.com app downloads, which is something that we watch pretty closely. How should we be thinking about the number of monthly downloads that you think you can generate post-lockdown? Are you optimistic that you'll continue to see high number of downloads of wu.com? If that's the case, can you maybe elaborate on where those downloads will most likely be coming from? Any data points you can share with us there would be very helpful. Thanks.
Yeah. Clearly, you watch it very closely, Jeff. Those are quite specific questions. I think we will certainly think about those questions. I would say in general, our app downloads have been way above market, no matter how you measure the level of app downloads vis-a-vis the rest of the market. We just decided to present that this time because it was so telling to us in terms of what the market shifts that was taking place. That's why we're really showing it. I don't know, Hikmet, do you want to add anything to that?
No, I think the new customers, the apps are coming from the new customers. Definitely people are loading their apps because they are searching for the money transfer. You could see that acquisition from new customers and download from apps, especially the mobile apps usage is really increasing. People are switching more to mobile apps, and our app has been improving. The one benefit we have, we really adapt our app country by country, region by region. Not many companies can do that. We are in 75 countries. We do ethnic marketing. There's country-specific regulations there. The know-your-customer environment and the ethnic marketing has been really adapting country by country. That makes a huge competitive advantage.
If you are in a part of Europe, you have it in Italian, or you go to Russia, you have it in Russian, or you go to U.S., you have in English part. I believe that makes us different. That's why we have quite good downloads on apps and puts us in a leading position.
Great, thanks. Then I just wanted to circle back to an earlier question on what you're seeing in your digital transaction growth, which you're saying is 115% in C2C, and that's clearly accelerating. Can you talk a little more about that? I just want to understand the mix of those transactions coming from Europe, coming from Latin America, Asia, domestically here in the U.S., etc . How is that digital mix breaking out right now? How is it maybe a little different now versus what it looked like a year ago? Why? Just any color you can give us on digital transaction mix that you can call out would be great.
Yeah. Let me give it a shot here. One interesting data point that is important, I think, for everyone to understand is on our wu.com business, first of all. We continue to see declines in the domestic part of westernunion.com and the broader company. It's become a much smaller piece. If you really look at the cross-border aspect of westernunion.com, it's almost 90% of the revenue in terms of cross-border. That's quite strong. The digital white label growth, wu.com, first of all, is coming from U.S. outbound and Europe outbound. That's where we're getting a lot of the growth in .com. Then for digital white label, we're seeing it obviously from the Sberbank partnership, which is also in the European numbers, and then also Saudi Telecom, which is in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia numbers.
That's why you're seeing big mix shifts that are happening within those two regions, and then how it all adds up to the total company. That's why I think that the transaction growth is likely to be staying at a higher level than where we see revenue growth, given all this digital mix that's been happening in the business. I'm not sure if that answers your question, Jeff, but is that helpful?
Yeah, that's great. Thanks very much.
Sure.
Congrats on the results.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Bryan Keane of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Congratulations on some of these numbers. They look quite impressive, especially in June and July with 20% + cross-border principal growth.
Thanks, Bryan
I guess I'm just trying to understand, maybe did the World Bank have it wrong that COVID was going to be a hurt and maybe COVID has a one-time positive impact? Or do you guys think it's more sustainable than that?
You want to start, Hikmet, you want me?
Yeah. I'll start. COVID environment is definitely new, Bryan. It's hard to read in because obviously the world is in a different place since COVID-19 started. One thing we know that these customers are coming mostly to digital, and they are new to us, and we know that the digital customers stay with us, and so that's great. Part of that, as you know, the digital customers they are different customer segment. They have to have a bank account, otherwise they can't send money. They have a credit card or debit cards or account direct to debit their accounts. This is new to us, and they are staying with us, and they are staying for a long with us. Within that environment, also what helps us is geographical presence, our payout network and APN network, our account payout network helps us to acquire them.
I believe the growth of digital is going to continue to be a good, healthy growth. Now, is it during COVID? I don't believe so. I think we have a good base. Now the growth rates, that's why we did not also give out year-end guidance, right? We don't know what the COVID impact to our business, the macro impact looks like. I feel confident generally with the acquisition of the new customers.
Got it. Just as a follow-up, thinking about the 20% growth you guys are seeing versus the market being down likely low single digit. Is that all explainable through the share you're taking in digital, or is there things that are happening on the retail end as well that you're gaining share that's creating that massive delta and difference?
Yeah. Retail is also obviously, customers are coming back in retail also. We can see that. Some of the competitors, smaller competitors location were closed, and some of the competition has maybe not the financial positioning that we have it. I believe that we're gaining also market share in retail. Now, it's in a different base obviously. The strong growth comes from digital, right? We are also seeing principal and market share growth in retail.
Yeah. Bryan, in June and July, I can tell you specifically that not only did we get more than 20% cross-border principal growth, but we also saw cross-border principal growth, slight growth, I would say, in retail itself. I think that just supports what Hikmet was saying. It's not going to necessarily be true for the full year, but certainly for the month of June and July, we've seen pretty good trends.
This concludes both the question and answer session and The Western Union Second Quarter 2020 E arnings Release Conference Call. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.