> Why does another company not come in to steal 9% to 24% of the GDP of the whole country?

It's less than that.

$ 400 million commissions / $ 24 640 million GDP x 100 = 1.66% of GDP.

I am not familiar with how revenue is shared between the remitting companies, but part of those commissions are set to offset the costs of operating the remittance network in El Salvador. Operating offices, armored trucks, complaiace, bank staff wages and security expenses.

2019 GDP https://tradingeconomics.com/el-salvador/gdp

I suspected as much, as is usually the case when someone posits a grand conspiracy.

10% of 25% is 2.5%

Oops! I misread it as “10% to 25%” of GDP rather than “10% off of 25%”

Because WU has a monopoly on remittance payments in multiple countries.

Interesting. Is there any reading material available for how this monopoly is maintained? Are the country’s leaders being paid a cut for allowing WU to be the only money transmitter or something like that?

Most banks here support between 5 and 15 remittance companies. I wouldn't call it a monopoly.

Exclusivity agreements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Union#Anti-competitive...

That makes sense. I would not have thought even a poor country’s bank would agree to that. But it does not seem to be a problem in El Salvador today.

The situation is also getting better based on this report linked in Wikipedia:

http://www.remesas.org/files/exclusivityWP9.pdf

Most banks are not WU exclusive in El Salvador.

People gloss over what goes into money transfer. There is substantial risk, verification of identity of recipient, etc. With Bitcoin the services are simply not offered, so it's not really comparable. You get irreversible money transfer to an bitcoin address nothing more and nothing less. Western Union's services go well beyond that.

I figured, I just thought I might ask for a source to lend credence to any conspiracy theory.

Not true anymore. Moneygram and Ria Envia have been growing very fast to Latin America and there are numerous smaller firms stealing market share in the digital send space.

> Because WU has a monopoly on remittance payments in multiple countries.

Not in El Salvador. A quick Google search shows that:

A mid sized bank supports about 9 remittance companies. And a credit union supporting about 15.