Western Union and Techstars partner on accelerator

DENVER — Techstars and The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU) are partnering on a new financial tech accelerator.

Over the next three years, Western Union will work with Techstars to provide mentorship and seed-stage funding for startups out of Western Union’s new Denver headquarters. There will be 10 startups per class each year, interacting with and getting mentoring from Western Union executives.

“Through the accelerator program, we will mentor startups to test their ideas, focus their concepts, and help them bring-to-market innovative customer solutions to the ever-changing financial industry,” Hikmet Ersek, President & CEO at Western Union, said in a prepared statement. “By joining forces with Techstars, we will have access to entrepreneurial talent to help us identify cutting-edge technologies and approaches to solve customer pain points.”

Western Union and Techstars are seeking any fintech, payments and any related startups that are solving pain points such as the digital customer experience, point-of-sale, fraud prevention, global identification, cross-border transaction processing, digital wallets and any related technologies. Applications for the accelerator program open Dec. 3. The program begins in June 2019. More information is available on Techstars’ website.