Why the affinity for Western Union?
 

I'm doing final preparations for my family's trip to Argentina (last 2 weeks of Sept) and I'm running into an odd situation (at least to me) while trying to reserve rooms at smaller bungalow-type lodgings, mostly in Patagonia. It seems that almost all of them want you to send a percentage of the cost beforehand and they only accept Western Union wire transfers. My problem with that, besides the fact that it's like going back to the 60's, is the stiff fee W U charges, close to 25%.
I've made lodging reservations in some out of the way places in other parts of the world before and at the few places that required $$$ beforehand they accepted a credit card.

What's the problem in Argentina?

Many smaller lodging operations that do not accept credit cards have WU as their only means to secure a deposit for the requested reservations. Acceptance of credit cards is (unfortunatetly) not as widespread in Argentina, so many smaller establishments will use WU or similar services to get payments from folks that make bookings overseas.

I guess PayPal needs to make further headway in Argentina.

John

Indeed... an alternate system would be good for everybody, although the regulatory, taxation and other related legal issues here in Argentina are somewhat more complicated than in the USA and other G7 nation economies.