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invest in our brand and continue our value pricing.
Now under ExpressPayment, which also runs through our money transfer platform. The highlight here, again, is the biller network and going from 500 locations in 2002 to 1,800 in 2006. We've grown our biller network dramatically. The urgent bill payment product is a premium priced product. We get that premium due to the reporting and integration that we have with our customers, the real-time effect and also the good funds that we are able to provide because the biller can be certain that we've actually collected the money from the customer.
There's different levels of connectivity. In some cases, and with a lot of our major billers, we're actually going directly and feeding their systems and that connectivity is just, again, a huge asset for us. And then also Payment Tracker, which we believe is a state -- is really the industry-leading standard in terms of Internet reporting and there's features within that tool where customers can actually take that data and upload it into their system if we don't have that direct connection right into their systems to begin with. So, a really good tool for the medium-sized billers in our network.
We believe that this is an asset as you look towards the future in terms of being able to take bill payments from other sources and being able to consolidate into billers and because we have those relationships, it should help augment our walk-in bill payment business as well and the expansion of that initiative.
Next we'll talk about the strategic priorities and what we have on tap for 2007. These remain very consistent you may have seen these before. I think we've had these out here for about four years from now and really it's what we're intending to do in the coming years here. And first and foremost, that's to provide the consumers with a superior value and tell them about it. We do believe that we're the value leader in virtually every market that we serve and it's important then that we get the message out to the customer and we'll talk about how we view that. We want to expand our distribution, in particular, in the short term, our physical distribution and long term our virtual distribution and we'll talk again about our online service and Directed Sends and some of the things that we're doing there. And the new payment products and related financial services is the third strategy, things like bill payment, walk-in bill payment, our ACH services and the expansion. And then finally, building a superior low-cost service platform and that servicing platform is what provides us with the scale and which provides us with the great customer care that we deliver, our agent servicing and then finally the consumer value that we're able to provide.
So let's start with priority number one, telling consumers about the value that we provide to them. First of all, we rolled out simplified pricing and completed that last year within the United States. And again simplified pricing is where we've taken out a lot of the banding. And if you've ever looked at one of the fee charts for money transfer, there is a lot of different bands, a lot of different prices. It's very confusing for the agents to communicate to the consumer and confusing for the consumer and what we tried to do is really simplify that approach, take out a lot of the bands, make it easier to execute for the consumer and provide them the better value.
We've also then, as we look forward, we are going to take a more targeted approach. We feel like prices in most places have been fairly stable. And when you take a look at our capabilities here, we're actually reacting much more on a zip code level. We're on a location level in terms of where we would take pricing action.
The other part of that value proposition, as we talked about, is the multiple and multi-currency roll outs that we've had. We've completed 34 country conversions out of the 90 in 2006 and in 2007 we have a very aggressive plan to continue to march to roll out more currency choices for our consumer.
As far as telling them about it and the brand message behind that value proposition is really starting with the investment in the brand. We'll talk about how we do that. First and foremost is to really maintain a consistent percent of revenue. We target a very consistent investment back into marketing. Having said that, 2006 was a bit higher as you saw, we spent money in the fourth quarter and as you saw too, we were bringing on an awful lot of network, we got to 110,000 locations and we felt we had the opportunity to really invest in marketing at that time around those locations.
So if you take a look at our program, down at the bottom left and top right is really the foundation. It starts with signs and just basic location awareness and we put up over 20,000 signs in the past year, a very big number, in terms of getting that awareness out into the market.
Just second from the left, on the bottom there, is what we call a red shop. That's another foundational strategy for us. We put up hundreds of these last year in the UK, Spain, Nigeria and other critical markets where we're really taking an individual agent location and turning it into a MoneyGram location. We're painting the location red, we're putting up signs and it's really well MoneyGram branded.
To the right of that picture is a picture of one of the street teams. And here we have people from an ethnic group that we're going out to the communities and hiring folks, on a contract basis, to go reach out to the various communities. Going out to festivals and churches, and different types of events which reach the end consumer to market. And speak to them in their language and really promote the MoneyGram service and the great value that we have in the market.
We do a lot of different forms of advertising, various media. Here's a picture of a billboard, so we do a lot of outdoor, we do radio, we're on cable TV, we have a very large Hispanic TV campaign that we've been running over the last couple of years and putting a lot of effort into our media campaigns as well. So all these things stack on top of each other and then the final stage here and the final picture is really the promotional activity. And so again, getting out to a lot of these events and it's a lot of communities and festivals that we're reaching out to the consumer and helping promote the MoneyGram service on a day-to-day basis.
The second strategy is extending our distribution and our new delivery methods. If you take a look at the agent locations and the physical distribution that is really the key focal point. Convenience is absolutely critical to our consumer. We are targeting 15 to 20% growth in our fiscal -- our physical distribution and that really is a global march. It is in the United States, it's in Europe, it's in all the key receive markets as well and we plan to continue to increase our distribution in the 170 countries that we're in
Importantly as a complement to that is our virtual distribution strategy though. And if you take a look at recipients, there is an increasing desire for the ability to receive that money not at a critical location. To have that money deposited into a bank accounts and delivered to their home or put onto a card and that is what our Directed Send capability provides. So we can include that in our virtual distribution for the recipient.
On the sending side, we have e-Money Transfer and that's the access through the Internet. That has done very well for us. We're up 140% year-over-year in 2006, a very exciting opportunity. We've had good adoption rates on that and then if you look at the supporting mechanism behind that, we redesigned our website and we now a website that accommodates 44 different languages, we've taken the navigational flow and changed that and as you see, the evolution of money transfer on the Internet. We'll be communicating that in more languages as we move forward and just a great way to target the customer.
Also on the distribution side, our second strategy is our retail expansion. This is -- we're doing it in strategic markets, we're doing this in France and Germany where there are licensing issues, where you have to have a form of a banking license in order to conduct money transfer. And then we're doing it in selected corridors in the US, primarily in New York City to certain corridors and really a targeted approach just where we don't have agent locations today.
The formats take two forms. One is the standalone stores and then the other would be kiosks or implants inside somebody else's storefront. And we like both models, a lot of this is just based on the demographics, the number of immigrants that we feel are in a particular area and then we'll make the best decision in terms of what type of solution we think fits that particular area of the city. As of the end of the year, we had 20 locations that were active in France and in Germany and as we stated earlier too, we expected the impact of that to be about $0.03 per share.
The number three priority was delivering new payment products and related financial services. Again, the InPerson Bill Payment, our walk-in bill payment service, 3 to 5-day delivery, it has a low price point and really complementary to our ExpressPayment product offering and then also our money order distribution. And again, we have the 55,000 money order locations that we feel like would be great targets for this service, very complementary.
We also have our, what we call, electronic payments and this is where we're providing the back office services for biller direct payments. So this would be individual billers that are looking to outsource telephone-based bill payment, web-based bill payments or IVR-based bill payments. The backbone of this, as you may recall, is the acquisition that we did in April of 2005, ACH Commerce. That's a platform that we've been modifying to reach this target and again when you take a look at the long-term strategy of penetrating the financial institutions with additional products and services, this would be one of those products that we're trying to push there. So we feel very good about bill payments going forward.
The other new product that we talk about is prepaid cards, this continues to be an evolution for us. We have a general spend MasterCard, out in the market, it's issued at selected locations today, but reloadable at the locations at which we offer ExpressPayment and money transfer services throughout the United States.
So we've got a great network and a great platform to continue to push this product. We've gotten some penetration within our US base network. But we've got a ways to go on this and it would be prioritized behind bill payment in terms of importance to where we're headed strategically. But it is something that, again, we think is part of our long-term future. And there will be a nice tie-in down the road too as we look forward with our Directed Sends capability to actually put financial value onto a card from a money transfer standpoint, but we're not quite there yet.
The fourth strategic priority is to build a superior and low cost servicing platform. If you take a look at one of the things we're very proud of it's our customer care. We have a couple of pictures here, a site view and an area view of our Denver facility. It's very large. We have about 490 seats in that call center and they do a fantastic job. We took over 21 million calls in 2006, it's 24 by 7 by 365. We support 23 different languages and then we have another call center, which is an outsource solution that we use for excess calls and certain language support that is a little bit more difficult to get in Denver. And that is located in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Other parts of our low-cost service platform, we talk a lot about compliance and the investment there. We continue to invest in our systems, whether it's point of sale or our back-end processing. We spend a lot of time talking and acting on our agent training. We actually have people now out in the field that not only are doing training, but they're also doing follow-up audits to that training to make sure that our agents are performing what they need to perform. And we also spent a lot of time on the people side, a lot of our employees go through anti-money laundering training and I think we have about 75 employees now that are looking after anti-money laundering and OFAC compliance within the organization.
As part of our superior low-cost platform, we're also investing in the back office and this is really a result of our growth and it's a result of the new product offerings that we're bringing on board and trying to tie those things together. We're in the process today of implementing the Oracle e-Business modules and also driving automation in key process areas like the call center, like our agent on-boarding process to try to take some time out of the amount of time it takes to set up a customer.
And it's important we do this because it really supports the value proposition at the end of the day that we're able to offer to the consumer. The more efficient our back-end systems are the better value we can drive to the consumer at the end of the day. So we're making investments in both of those key areas.
What are some of the market challenges? Obviously, I think if you look at the US economy and -- both in terms of jobs and integration, if you compare the US economy to Mexico, we think one of the factors affecting Mexico has been the strong growth inside Mexico, the GP actually the highest rate that it's been in 6 years. We've talked about all those things from an immigration standpoint so we think the US market remains a bit of a challenge from that standpoint, although we have continued to take share in that environment.
The regulatory environment is global, it's dynamic. We have to apply US standards to all the countries in which we do business and then tighter standards where they're required by the local laws and regulations. So you can see the 75 people looking after AML and OFAC and we have a lot of people on the ground. We are placing and have been placing for the better part of a year regional compliance officers to deal with the local authorities on that evolving process.
And then staffing for growth, really finding the right talent and the right number of people to get into shares so we can take advantage of the vast opportunity that we have in front of us. So I think those would really summarize kind of the key challenges.
So how are we going to achieve our purpose and as Phil mentioned, our purpose statement is to help people in businesses by providing affordable, reliable and convenient payment services. So what we wanted to do is kind of summarize and capture under each one of those headings what it is that we're here to do and how we think we're going to do that.
From an affordability standpoint, we are positioned as a global leader in value. We believe that that's been our position for a number of years and we're going to strive to keep it in exactly that same place. Our pricing philosophy is to be less than the higher priced major competitor and right on top of the niche players. As part and parcel of that, we need to drive our processing costs lower, things like the call center, the Oracle e-Business solutions, those types of things, getting our processing as efficient as we possibly can to support that value proposition.
From a reliability standpoint we continue to invest in our systems whether its compliance, it could be our point of sale front end like AgentConnect where we are actually tying into an agent's actual physical system. Our FormFree platform, where they're talking to our call center operators to conduct a transaction or Payment Tracker, where we are providing integration and reporting tools back to the biller community. We continue to make that investment in systems that aid our agents and our customers.
Expanding our global brand and trust, putting up more signs, putting up red shops, expanding our street team approach and our promotional activities and then layering the appropriate media on top of that platform.
And then finally, from a convenience standpoint, growing a high quality global network. It starts with physical distribution over the next couple -- three years, that's going to remain the key element. It's going to be the traditional agent model and the expansion of that and it's also be an expansion in selected markets of our retail strategy.
And then on the virtual side, e-Money Transfer, on the send side, allowing consumers to come in via the Internet and on the back end being able to expand our Directed Send capability and expanding the choice for the recipients about how they get that money. And that really is the key word that we leave you with. I think when it comes down to the consumer, in the future, it's going to be about choice, choice and how you can deliver money transfer to them in the way they want to receive it and bill payments as well and that's what we're here to do.
The last slide I have, I believe, before I turn it back over to Phil is just MoneyGram 2010. What are the goals? Well, number one, we want to double the size of our agent network. You can see that we did that from 2002 and 2006 and we'd like to do it from 2006 to 2010. That would put us solidly over 200,000 locations.
We want to increase our global money transfer market share. We were successful doing that, again, from 2002 to 2006 and we'd like to continue to do the growth. And while cash-based transfers will remain the largest segment, we believe, over the next three to four years, it's going to be about building global electronic product offerings that serve our customers needs. As I said in the prior summary slide, building those money transfer enhancements like e-Money Transfer and Directed Sends, making bill payment the number two engine inside the company and then expanding our reach with the prepaid card.
And with that I'll turn it back over to Phil.
PHIL MILNE: Thanks, Tony and Bill, and great overview and probably a little deeper than -- into the business than I think we've probably taken you ever before. And you'll be glad to know that of course as Tony volunteered those goals, those are now in his long-term incentive plan, so I hope today that you have a clear idea that we know how we want to grow this business. And as I said when we started, we really like the position that we're in. We really like the markets that we're playing in. And if you look at global integration, you look at how fragmented this market is and you look at the opportunities ahead of us in some of these emerging markets, we just think we've got a great space to play in and an awful lot of runway and that the market dynamics are in our favor as we push forward.
So we just have a just a generally we just really like the businesses that we're in and we feel very good about the position that we're in. And as we started with a strong balance sheet and generate lots of cash for investment and I think our long-term financial goals really speak for themselves.
So with that, we're going to take some questions and Tim has the magic microphone and I'll take the first crack at him and then we'll dish him off as needed.
TIM GALLAHER: Sure. Just for the benefit of the people that are in on the webcast, before you ask your question if you could just mention your name and the firm so that that's out there also. Any hands?
PHIL MILNE: I think Craig did.
CRAIG PECKHAM, ANALYST, JEFFERIES AND COMPANY: It's Craig Peckham from Jefferies. Phil, you pointed out low leverage as part of the investment proposition and balance sheet profile. How important is maintaining low leverage to the go-forward strategy? And could you tell us a little bit about your appetite for taking on debt either to selected acquisitions or to buy back stock?
PHIL MILNE: I think the reason we brought that up was we really feel like we're trying to, one, with the cash flow that we're generating and with the strong balance sheet, we're investing back in the business. And I hope you got a good flavor that from Tony's presentation. Some of these emerging markets and the agent growth that we're going to have, we want to support them with signage and with marketing.
We're investing in new product development and we're investing in a platform, we're investing in automation and in the call center and then we're also investing in the infrastructure of MoneyGram International itself. I mean, we have grown this company very, very rapidly over the last 3 to 4 years. And so we need to continue to continue to invest in just the basic infrastructure to keep up with the growth.
Beyond that, as I said earlier, we've got excess cash. We're not going to sit around on it, we're going to redeploy it. Now if we don't find attractive deals out there, we'll continue to buy back shares if we can't redeploy it into business or find the right deal.
Acquisitions, we continue to look at a lot of different things. But we're going to maintain our discipline about it and things have been pretty pricey in the marketplace and after you -- before you have a deal, you've got to make it work. So we're going to maintain our discipline around that. So I think we want to keep our powder dry too, if the right deal came along at the right price, that was the right strategic fit.
CRAIG PECKHAM: And maybe, I guess, a follow-up for Tony. You spent a lot of time talking about investments in compliance and so forth. Can you give us a sense maybe as a percentage of your revenue, how much you're spending on compliance today versus say in 2005? And by that I mean, specific to the hiring on AML and OFAC, but also what you may be having to help back up agents who are challenges by discontinuance issues with banks, as an example?
PHIL MILNE: Well, I -- Tony, you can answer this, but we run at -- I'd say the way I want to answer that is we are increasingly investing in compliance. Now I'm not going to give you a percentage of revenue, but it's been -- it's a significant investment. And I think Tony outlined, it's been in people and we've been putting feet on the ground in key markets around the globe. This isn't just an issue here in the States, it's an issue -- it's a global issue. And we're also investing in systems to try to automate as much of this as possible and, Tony, maybe you can add to that?
TONY RYAN: We've added people on the ground too to actually do audits and follow-up checks for our customers and make sure that they are compliant. That's been part of the program as well as getting the training tools in different languages as well. If you look back a couple of years, we weren't supporting as many languages as we are now and trying to get those things out to people in the languages they speak is very important and very critical.
PHIL MILNE: Yes, we're also investing in things like Internet-based training modules for our agents so that they can refresh their training on anti-money laundering. We take it extremely seriously, we don't want our products used for illegal purposes and we will continue to