MoneyGram announced Tuesday it had launched its own U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin on the Stellar (XLM) blockchain, joining a growing wave of global payments companies and banks building products around digital dollars.
The stablecoin, dubbed MGUSD, will be embedded into the MoneyGram app, allowing customers to hold a dollar-denominated balance in a self-custodial wallet and transfer funds through the company's global payments network.
The product debuted Tuesday in the U.S. with plans for a broader international rollout, the firm said.
MoneyGram's move comes as stablecoins have become one of crypto's fastest-growing sectors, drawing interest from banks, fintech firms and payment providers looking to revamp cross-border payments using blockchain rails. These tokens, with prices tied to fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar, could offer cheaper, faster and around-the-clock settlements than traditional banking rails, making them increasingly popular for remittances. Their market size could reach $4 trillion by 2030 from the current $300 billion, global bank Citi projected.
SoFi recently unveiled its in-house build stablecoin SoFiUSD, while companies such as PayPal and Western Union partnered with crypto infrastructure providers like Paxos and Anchorage Digital to bring stablecoin services to customers.
MoneyGram, with over 60 million customers and nearly half a million retail
locations, is following the latter path.
The company partnered with Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure platform acquired by Stripe, which serves as MGUSD's regulated issuer. Blockchain infrastructure firm M0 developed the smart contracts used to mint and redeem the token, while Fireblocks provides wallet infrastructure.
"Starting with our distribution platform, we’re using stablecoin as a foundation to build future applications on our global network," said Anthony Soohoo, chairman and CEO of MoneyGram, in a statement. "MGUSD is the stablecoin we built for our customers, for the families sending money home and for the billions of people around the world with limited financial access."
The company said MGUSD is intended to serve as a core piece of infrastructure across its payments network, which reaches more than 60 million customers and nearly 500,000 retail locations worldwide.
The launch builds on MoneyGram's relationship with the Stellar Development Foundation, a partnership that has focused on stablecoin-powered remittance services for the past five years.
"Stellar was built for real-world utility at institutional scale," Stellar Development Foundation CEO Denelle Dixon said in a statement. "MGUSD is the next milestone that demonstrates what purpose-built blockchain can deliver when paired with a trusted payments network."