If you need to send money to people overseas, and they need to get it fast, Western Union is a good but expensive option.
Sure you can do an IMT with your bank, but not everyone actually has a bank account, and if they do, it can take 4 business days and the receiving bank may well charge them a hefty fee for receiving the money.
Western Union and Moneygram and the like offer the receiver the ability to receive cash in hand in thousands of locations in their country. It's a lot more convenient in certain circumstances.
I do not recommend Western Union normally because their fees are just too high. Often the Western Union fee for a transfer is more than double the Moneygram fee for the same transfer.
Moneygram self-service kiosks in 7-Eleven stores are generally a far cheaper option. It is a pity Moneygram don't offer an online service like Western Union do in Australia.
Anyway I just came across this little gem of a code:
FIRSTFREEAU
You must not have made an online money transfer with Western Union before to use it.
Visit the Western Union web site in the link, open an account and make EVERY money transfer totally free of the normally excessively high Western Union "transfer fees".
To give you an idea of potential savings, say a 35,000 baht transfer to Thailand would normally incur a fee of about $81 AUD. Using the code on a new account, that fee is zero…
LOL $81. Even the bank is only $24. Search Failbook and you can find people who do transfers for $5 (for regular customers).