MoneyGram has announced their latest partner Fireblocks.
MoneyGram Moves Further Into Stablecoins With Fireblocks As A Key Service Partner
The global remittance company has named Fireblocks as a stablecoin partner to help scale their entrance into the world of stablecoins. This will primarily target internal treasury operations, as well as make use of Fireblocks’ custody and secure stablecoin settlement via their network for payments.
Chairman and CEO of MoneyGram Anthony Soohoo had expressed:
We are leading the next era of money movement by enabling money to move instantly across any channel – fiat or stablecoin. Fireblocks accelerates this vision by giving us the secure, programmable infrastructure to transform global payments at scale.”
Adding to this, CEO and co-founder of Fireblocks Michael Shaulov had noted:
MoneyGram is rebuilding the rails of cross-border settlement in real time. By moving to a multi-chain, programmable infrastructure, it’s upgrading the speed and reliability of global payments at the foundation layer – where it matters most for the people who rely on these payments every day.”
MoneyGram continues to advance its stablecoins services and capabilities. For many remittance providers this generally means that they do not necessarily have to build a blockchain infrastructure from scratch, but to partner with a company, such as Fireblocks – that allows liquidity across top networks and stablecoins.
MoneyGram Archives Older Wallet, Western Union Competition Heats Up
The comany had earlier partnered with one of the leading stablecoin infrastructure providers Crossmint, specifically focusing on scaling inside the LATAM region with better off-ramping and in-app wallet functionality.
Since then, it has been mentioned on X that their legacy wallet system may be removed by year’s end in favour of Crossmint’s new stablecoin integration and custom wallet solution.
Fellow remittance providers Remitly and Western Unionare also aware of how stablecoins are influencing the underlying business model and are ensuring that they are well equipped to be powerful actors in the space.
The latter only coming out a few days prior to reveal just how seriously they are taking the implementation across key areas of business.
Below is a highlighted transcript by on X detailing Western Union’s CEO’s investor day reflections on the coming months and the step-by-step overview of rolling out their stablecoin strategy:
With stablecoins, cross-border payments have already started to benefit greatly – it is expected that this will be the dominant use-case alongside personal savings.
In 2024 alone, the global remittance volume was $950B (per Migration Data Portal data).
The Landscape Of Stablecoin Remittance
Previously, sending payments overseas had meant securing local agents, stores and trustworthy banking / PSP (Payment Service Provider) partners to ensure money gets from point A to point B.
Not to mention the delays with corresponding banks, issue of pre-funded accounts, as well as uncertain FX rates on currency conversion.
Also, depending on the chosen infrastructure and partnerships, the factors to account for in a traditional remittance channel can be vast.
With stablecoins, the remittance sender is able to transfer funds via selected blockchain networks and into the wallet of the recipient directly.
Family members or recipients of regular remittance transfers may additionally choose to use the wallet balances natively and not convert to cash or to their local currency either if received in U.S. dollars, and instead spend stablecoins as they wish “as is”.
