MoneyGram, a remittance-focused company, announced a new pilot in the Stellar Blockchain after inking a partnership with the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF). According to the blog post, both parties agreed to launch a live cash-in and cash-out pilot in the US.
That said, participants can deposit cash into their wallets at participating MoneyGram locations and send Payments internationally via Stellar’s USDC. Also, the pilot allows participants to exchange USDC for any fiat currency supported on the MoneyGram platform. “Electronic wallets, app-based financial services and digital assets are more popular than ever, and one payments company has taken note of the growing adoption of these innovative products and services,” the Stellar Development Foundation noted.
Moreover, settlements are nearly instantaneous via USDC payments, which expects to accelerate ‘fund collection, improve efficiency and reduce risk’.
“At its core, this unique partnership embraces the reality that, even though the utility and adoption of digital assets are growing, cash isn’t going anywhere. Many markets across the world still run on cash, and these markets often serve large un- and under-banked populations,” the SDC pointed out.
Stellar-MoneyGram Deal's Timeline
In September, MoneyGram inked the formal partnership with Stellar. The remittance-focused company is a former Ripple partner, while Stellar is a competitor of the blockchain firm behind the development of XRP.
The new service is expected to be available worldwide in 2022, as the pilots will go live in ‘select markets’ during the rest of this year. Moreover, United Texas Bank will serve as the settlement bank between MoneyGram and Circle, which is the issuer of the USDC stablecoin.
In May, Moneygram announced that it had partnered with the Bitcoin ATM operator, Coinme to facilitate the Bitcoin transactions services. The MoneyGram and Coinme duo is set to take 4% of every transaction, along with a flat fee of $2.75. In addition, Walmart-based MoneyGram locations will charge an extra $2.
