Today MoneyGram announced it supports the purchase of cryptocurrencies bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin via the MoneyGram app. The remittance company has been using cryptocurrency and blockchain for some time. Previous steps were a path to enable cross border payments and resulted in on and offramps in fiat currencies, even if they were stablecoins. Now the on and offramps can be cryptocurrencies.
It follows the news at the start of the year that MoneyGram bought a minority stake in crypto onramp CoinMe, a crypto exchange that is powering the latest move.
“Cryptocurrencies are additive to everything we’re doing at MoneyGram. From dollars to euros to yen and so on,” said Alex Holmes, MoneyGram Chairman and CEO. “We see crypto and digital currencies as another input and output option.”
Apart from Coinme, MoneyGram has partnered with G-Coin, Stellar and Circle’s USDC stablecoin to support stablecoin payouts.
These initiatives are relatively recent during the last year, but MoneyGram inked its first blockchain deal back in 2019 with Ripple. The crypto firm invested $50 million in MoneyGram so that it would use the Ripple On Demand Liquidity solution that enables cross border payments using the XRP cryptocurrency as an intermediate coin.
However, in late 2020, the SEC sued Ripple, alleging XRP was a security. MoneyGram suspended its Ripple arrangement in February 2021 and a few weeks later, Ripple announced it had ended by mutual agreement. According to Ripple, MoneyGram had processed billions in transfers using its solution.
“As consumer interest in digital currencies continues to accelerate, we are uniquely positioned to meet that demand and bridge the gap between blockchain and traditional financial services thanks to our global network, leading compliance solutions and strong culture of fintech innovation,” said Holmes.
