Why MoneyGram Launched A Bankless Payment Method On Stellar

Payment giant MoneyGram International continues to cement its partnership with the Stellar ecosystem. Via an official post, the company announced a new stage for its collaboration by deploying a live cash-in and cash-out pilot initiative in the United States.

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After ending its relationship with payment solution company Ripple due to the U.S. SEC lawsuit against its executives, MoneyGram established a collaboration with the Stellar Development Foundation. In a little under 2 months, the partners have taken important steps to improve the company’s payment settlement capabilities.

According to MoneyGram, their newest pilot initiative has allowed them to deploy “one of the quickest, most seamless integrations yet”. As of now, participants in the U.S. can make dollar deposits into their wallets at certain MoneyGram establishments and leverage Stellar-based USDC Coin (USDC) to send instant payments abroad.

In addition, participants will be able to exchange Stellar USDC for “any cash currency supported” on MoneyGram. The official post claims:

With Stellar, MoneyGram enables consumers to seamlessly convert USDC to cash, or cash to USDC – all without requiring a bank account. Since USDC is the world’s fastest growing digital dollar currency, the utility and liquidity of this versatile digital asset will only grow as more wallets and companies join the Stellar ecosystem

The company added that this program has made MoneyGram’s payment settlement “instantaneous”, for the first time since its inception. In that way, the company believes that consumers will be able to benefit from an increase in payment efficiency, less risk, and a speed-up fund collection.

Unlike its competitor, MoneyGram believes that cash money will be a part of the future as a tool for the unbaked. In that sense, they attempt to create alternatives to cash and expand the access to financial opportunities to everyone.

Per the post, MoneyGram has used Stellar’s resources and documentation for their developer kits and its “well-designed set” of ecosystem protocols (SEPs) with various APIs to create their pilot solution.

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Expected to be publicly available in 2021, Jake Urban, Senior Software Engineer at the Stellar Development Foundation made a step-by-step demonstration on how users can exchange and send money via the MoneyGram solution, as seen in the video below. The company said:

By integrating with Stellar, MoneyGram is offering its millions of users a local fiat entry into blockchain, providing those in emerging markets easier access to digital assets than ever before. This pilot is just the first of many steps to create greater access to the world’s financial system for everyone, regardless of where they are.

As of press time, XLM trades at $0,32 with a 6% loss in the daily chart.