MoneyGram has introduced MGUSD, a dollar-backed stablecoin designed to power its global payments network and eventually serve its 60 million active customers.
The stablecoin launches first in the United States, where it will handle treasury management, settlement and currency trading. A global rollout follows later this year.
Built for people, not crypto traders
MGUSD targets a different user than most stablecoins. Rather than serving crypto traders or institutional desks, MoneyGram built it for families sending money across borders and the estimated billions of people with limited access to formal financial services.
In markets where local currencies lose value or banking infrastructure remains thin, MGUSD gives customers a stable, dollar-denominated balance they can hold around the clock, move globally and convert into local currency on demand.
“The stablecoin market has largely focused on the asset itself,” said Anthony Soohoo, Chairman and Chief Executive of MoneyGram. “We started with our distribution platform and used stablecoin as a foundation to build future applications on our global network. 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.”
How it works
MGUSD draws on a stack of specialised partners. Bridge, a Stripe company and GENIUS Act-ready issuer, handles regulated issuance. M0 provides the smart contract infrastructure for minting and burning tokens. The stablecoin launches on the Stellar blockchain, with MoneyGram storing MGUSD in Fireblocks wallets before distributing funds to individual customer wallets embedded directly in the MoneyGram app.
That app integration matters. Customers access MGUSD through a self-custodial wallet, meaning they hold their own funds rather than relying on a custodian. The product requires no crypto knowledge and no separate exchange account.
A network already in place
The company reaches nearly 500,000 retail locations worldwide, with more than 70 percent of transactions now processed digitally. That combination of physical and digital reach — cash counters alongside mobile wallets — gives MGUSD a path to users that purely digital rivals cannot easily replicate.
The Stellar partnership that underpins MGUSD stretches back five years. Together, the two organisations have already processed stablecoin-powered transfers at scale.
“Stellar was built for real-world utility at institutional scale,” said Denelle Dixon, Chief Executive of the Stellar Development Foundation. “Our partnership with MoneyGram proves that stablecoins have moved well beyond pilots. MGUSD is the next milestone that demonstrates what purpose-built blockchain can deliver when paired with a trusted payments network.”
Rebuilt from the ground up
Luke Tuttle, Chief Product and Technology Officer, said the company spent the past year re-architecting its core systems so that a digital dollar could move through the network as naturally as cash flows through its agent network.
“We rebuilt issuance, orchestration and settlement,” Tuttle said. “Everything our customers experience — faster transfers, the ability to hold digital dollars globally — sits on top of that work. Everything else runs invisibly by design.”
The result positions MGUSD not as a standalone product but as the monetary layer of a wider payments infrastructure MoneyGram intends to build on for years ahead.
