MoneyGram wants to use stablecoin USDC to 'build a bridge to crypto' for money transfers — even after the Terra meltdown
- MoneyGram will still add stablecoin USDC to its money-transfer services despite the Terra collapse.
- "We're trying to be a bridge from the crypto world to the fiat world," CEO Alex Holmes told Bloomberg.
MoneyGram is gearing up to add stablecoin USDC to its money-transfer services despite the recent Terra collapse, in a vote of confidence in digital currencies.
At the same time, the US company is looking to get involved in transfers of bitcoin to El Salvador, despite President Nayib Bukele's criticism of remittance providers' costs.
MoneyGram is still looking to launch a service that will let customers convert their holdings in wallets on the Stellar blockchain into Circle's stablecoin USDC. They can then send this within the US or overseas, and convert it into hard currency.
Crypto is "obviously here to stay, and it's going to be here for a long time despite recent selloffs and volatility," MoneyGram CEO Alex Holmes told Bloomberg. "Adopting it, bringing it into the mainstream is important."
The crash in Terra's algorithmic stablecoin terraUSD and its sister token luna earlier in May drove a wider cryptocurrency market meltdown. The loss of USDT's peg to the dollar and its ensuing death spiral — it fell 97% to near zero — undermined faith in stablecoins in general.
Despite that negative backdrop, Holmes still sees hope in stablecoins as a way to get around what he sees as a lack of compatibility between cryptocurrencies and government-issued currencies like the dollar.
"We're trying to be a bridge from the crypto world to the fiat world," Holmes said, according to the Bloomberg report Sunday.
One place MoneyGram has its eye on is El Salvador, whose government adopted leading cryptocurrency bitcoin as legal tender in September.
International money transfers account for more than 20% of the country's GDP, and its government, led by Bukele, made the move in part to help its citizens avoid remittance fees amounting to $400 million a year.
"If a country like El Salvador is going to make bitcoin seamless with US dollars in-country, I think that consumers, through MoneyGram, should be able to transfer bitcoin to El Salvador, or transfer dollars and convert them to bitcoin," Holmes said.
"If that's where the world is going, let's participate in that world and let's see how we can help fulfill that opportunity," he added.