MoneyGram's CEO says blockchain works best when customers don't know it's there

MoneyGram has spent years experimenting with blockchain technology, but CEO Anthony Soohoo says the company’s latest crypto-related revelation is that it works best when customers don’t have to think about it.

Speaking in an interview with CoinDesk, Soohoo said MoneyGram’s blockchain strategy has evolved from early experimentation into a broader effort to modernize the company’s global payments infrastructure. The remittance giant, which serves roughly 60 million active customers, sees blockchain less as a consumer-facing feature than as a way to make cross-border payments faster, cheaper and more transparent.

“What you’re always looking for is how to leverage technology to run your business more efficiently and effectively,” Soohoo said. “The use case is what do our customers want, and how do we solve that for them?”

MoneyGram’s customers are primarily people sending money to friends and family abroad, making speed and cost two of the biggest priorities. Traditional cross-border payments can take days to settle and often rely on banking hours and multiple intermediaries, making the experience cumbersome and expensive. But the firm believes that blockchain can streamline that process by enabling around-the-clock settlement and lowering operating costs, saving the company hopes to eventually pass on to customers.

In attempting to modernize and better meet its customers’ needs, MoneyGram has partnered with the Stellar network, which has underpinned many of the company’s blockchain initiatives over the past five years. But the company has also started exploring other ecosystems: while Stellar remains a core partner, MoneyGram has also become a validator on Solana and Tempo. For MoneyGram, the immediate payoff isn’t speculative crypto activity, it’s replacing legacy financial rails.

Today’s cross-border settlement still largely depends on banking hours and weekday processing. Blockchain-based infrastructure, Soohoo argued, enables real-time settlement around the clock, reducing operational costs while improving the customer experience.

“We believe if we do it right, we can achieve all three,” he said, referring to helping customers save time, effort and money. Instant settlement also allows MoneyGram to lower back-office costs, savings the company hopes to eventually pass on through lower prices. Currently, MoneyGram’s fees start at $1.89 and vary depending on what country you send them to.

Soohoo doesn’t believe consumers need to understand the technology powering those improvements. He compared blockchain to the processors inside Apple’s iPhone.

“I can’t tell you what processor is inside my iPhone,” he said. “I just know it’s faster.” In the same way, he argued, remittance customers care about whether money arrives quickly and reliably, not whether it traveled over a blockchain.