- Moneygram and Steller are about to launch their USDC remittance platform
- The pair announced a partnership last year and the first product is ready to go
- Stellar is a fork or Ripple, which tried and failed to work with Moneygram on a remittance solution
Moneygram and Stellar are on the verge of launching USDC remittances on the Stellar blockchain, according to Bloomberg. The pair have been working on a crypto remittance platform since October last year and this partnership seems set to bear fruit as Moneygram’s crypto payment platform opens for business. Moneygram famously had a ‘partnership’ with Ripple, ostensibly for this precise platform, but this never got off the ground, despite Ripple paying through the nose to attempt it.
Stellar to Power International Remittances on the Blockchain
According to MoneyGram Chief Executive Officer Alex Holmes, Moneygram will provide users with Stellar wallets which they will fill with USDC tokens purchased through the Moneygram platform. These tokens will be sent to the recipient, with the recipient cashing them back out into their local currency through Moneygram again. The transaction will be near instant and the transaction cost far less than if cash was being sent.
Holmes told Bloomberg that the crypto and fiat worlds are “not really compatible today” and that the company was “trying to be a bridge from the crypto world to the fiat world.” He was also keen to dispel any suggestions that USDC could go the way of Terra USD, explaining that, “We’re not taking the dollar and putting it in the reserves and then lending it out. Instead, the reserves are strictly cash and US Treasuries.”
XRP Army Will Not be Celebrating
Ripple supporters will not be happy at this news, partly because it was their project that was supposed to be working with Moneygram to create a remittance platform, although it was revealed in February 2020 that Ripple was paying for the privilege. This partnership never produced a workable solution, being officially killed off by Moneygram in March last year, but the ultimate irony is that Steller is a copy-paste of Ripple with some very minor differences, having been started by former co-founder Jed McCaleb after he left Ripple Labs.
Now that, Alanis, is ironic.
