MoneyGram, the ubiquitous send and receive cash network for retail customers, has made U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins and blockchain settlement rails the digital backbone of its revamped mobile app, the company said on Wednesday.
Customers in the Latin American country of Colombia, where MoneyGram has an extensive retail network of over 6,000 locations, will be the first to use the new app to receive and store stablecoin payments, with plans to expand to additional markets in the near future.
Colombia is the ideal launch market, says MoneyGram CEO Anthony Soohoo. It’s a major inbound remittance corridor where families receive more than 22 times the money they send abroad, and where the Colombian peso has lost over 40% of its value over the past four years.
When it comes to the advancement of stablecoins, Soohoo compares this to other killer apps such as the humble spreadsheet, which drove adoption in the early PC era, or what the browser did for the Internet, or GPS and mobile phones.
“Stablecoins really are the killer app for crypto and I think we’re just at the dawn of all the possibilities,” Soohoo said in an interview. “Our customers are able to hold and store a currency that is stable and allows for real time settlement. And with the GENIUS Act passed in the US, we now have a framework in terms of how it’s going to be regulated and how we can work with it.”
Under the hood, the new MoneyGram app is powered by Circle’s USDC stablecoin and Stellar, the fast and cheap blockchain, as well as Crossmint, a wallet infrastructure and stablecoin payments platform.
Stepping back, MoneyGram has close to half a million locations where customers can pick up cash or send money, Soohoo said. As a remittance provider, it services over 20,000 corridors around the world. MoneyGram also happens to be the largest cash on and off ramp for crypto, Soohoo added.
“When you talk about global payments there are a lot of companies that may have a presence and a strong brand in one market but when you leave the U.S., or the U.K., for example, no one knows about them,” Soohoo said. “We’ve been around for many years now and our brand is truly global.”