MoneyGram And Stellar To Expand USDC Payments Across Latin America With Extended Partnership

MoneyGram International and the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) have extended their partnership in a multi-year agreement aimed at expanding stablecoin-based payment services, starting with Latin America. The announcement was made on April 22 at Stellar House in Mexico City.

What Does The MoneyGram And Stellar Extension Actually Cover?

The renewed agreement builds on more than five years of collaboration since 2021, focused on making USDC settlement faster and cheaper across key remittance markets. The expanded scope includes rolling out MoneyGram's stablecoin balance feature, currently live in Colombia, to El Salvador, with further markets across Central and South America expected throughout the year.

The stablecoin balance feature, built on Stellar and powered by Circle's USDC and Crossmint, allows users to:

• Receive funds instantly into a USD-denominated balance
• Hold digital dollars without converting to local currency
• Cash out at any MoneyGram retail location

MoneyGram's network covers more than 200 countries and territories, with nearly 500,000 retail locations worldwide.

How Does The Technical Infrastructure Work?

The system runs on the Stellar blockchain, which was purpose-built for payment settlement at scale. Crossmint handles wallet infrastructure, while Circle's USDC provides the dollar-pegged stablecoin layer. Together, these components enable near-instant settlement and flexible cash access across MoneyGram's physical and digital network.

Since 2021, the partnership has also produced the MoneyGram Ramps API, a developer-facing tool that allows third-party platforms to plug into MoneyGram's cash on/off-ramp network, one of the largest of its kind for digital assets globally.

Why Latin America First?

Latin America is a high-volume remittance corridor. Many families in the region depend on cross-border transfers as a primary source of income, and a significant portion of recipients remain unbanked or underbanked. Colombia served as the initial test market, where the stablecoin balance feature saw strong user adoption before the El Salvador launch.

What Sets This Apart From MoneyGram's Past Crypto Partnerships?

MoneyGram previously worked with Ripple using its On-Demand Liquidity product, which was focused on foreign exchange trading rather than consumer payments. That relationship wound down after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed suit against Ripple in December 2020.

The Stellar partnership operates differently. It is directly consumer-facing, touching how individuals send, receive, and hold money, rather than functioning as a backend FX liquidity mechanism.

"We are building an open payments network that moves seamlessly across fiat and stablecoin, enabling faster, lower-cost transactions, starting with the people who need it most," said Anthony Soohoo, MoneyGram's Chairman and CEO.

Stellar's Broader Regulatory Momentum

The MoneyGram extension comes a week after Stellar crossed $2 billion in real-world assets on-chain. The network also recently integrated EURAU, a MiCAR-compliant euro stablecoin issued by AllUnity, a joint venture between DWS, Flow Traders, and Galaxy. 

EURAU is backed one-to-one by reserves held across European banks and licensed by Germany's BaFin. That puts Stellar alongside Circle's EURC and Société Générale-Forge's EURCV as regulated euro settlement options on the network.

Conclusion

MoneyGram and Stellar's extended partnership delivers a working stablecoin payment layer across MoneyGram's 500,000-location global network. With Colombia and El Salvador live, USDC settlement active on Stellar, and a developer API available for broader integration, the infrastructure is operational and expanding into new remittance markets on a defined timeline.

Resources

1. Press release by MoneyGram: MoneyGram and Stellar Extend Partnership to Scale Real-World Stablecoin Utility Globally

2. Report by CoinDesk: MoneyGram Partners With Stellar and USDC for Blockchain-Based Payments

3. Stellar Development Foundation official announcement of the EURAU integration with quotes from AllUnity and SDF leadership.

4. AllUnity launch release covering EURAU's BaFin license, MiCAR framework, and reserve structure.