00:00So talk to us about the why. Why is MoneyGram creating its own stable coin versus, you know, using one
00:06of the already stable coins in circulation?
00:11Yeah, thanks, Katie. It's great to be here. There's a lot of reasons, actually, in terms of wanting to build
00:17our own stable coin, specifically for MGSD, the coin we launched last week.
00:22And the reason being that we see it as a foundational step towards offering future services that will allow our
00:29customers to save time, effort and money.
00:32We believe building on crypto rails, especially around stable coin, is going to allow us to offer just different services
00:40than we could have done in the past.
00:42And we're very excited about it. So most stable coins have been built for traders and institutions.
00:47You're talking families and remittances. So why do you think that the market is ready for that?
00:52Well, I think what if we do our job right, actually, the consumers will not worry as much that they
00:59are actually using stable coin.
01:01We're going to try to abstract a lot of the complexity for them.
01:05What we want them to know is that they will have access to an asset that will be pegged to
01:11the U.S. dollar.
01:12And the reason that's important is because many of our customers around the world actually don't have access to assets
01:22where they can actually have access to a stable dollar, as well as have the ability to have additional financial
01:28services.
01:29And we're talking about billions of people around the world right now where they're living in environments where they have
01:36high FX volatility, as well as unstable currencies.
01:40And we believe this is going to be a real solution for them.
01:43And, you know, one thing I would mention is that MGUSD is the first, I would say, stable coin that
01:50was really built for consumers.
01:52You emphasize there because most of all the other stable coins out there that have been built have really been
01:57for, I would say, traders, as well as just institutions who are offering it and trying to offer trade among
02:04themselves.
02:04Yeah, no, it's a fair point.
02:06And you think about, you know, some of the pitches for stable coins that we've heard over the year, cross
02:12-border payments, money transfers definitely falls under that umbrella.
02:16I do want to couch this conversation in the regulatory backdrop because this announcement came in the last week or
02:22so.
02:23We're in June right now.
02:24And you think about what happened late last year, the Genius Act being signed into law.
02:30Was that a necessary step for you?
02:32How long had you been considering launching your own specific stable coin?
02:39Absolutely.
02:39I think the Clarity Act opened up, I would say, our thinking about what's possible and what you can't do.
02:47You know, to work in a regulated industry like ourselves, when you have frameworks that allows us to understand what
02:53the boundaries are, it always helps.
02:55We also believe that we operate across 200 countries and 20,000 corridors.
03:01So having that level of clarity from the U.S. government was huge for us in terms of establishing the
03:06framework for us to launch MGUSD.
03:09So MoneyGram moves billions of dollars globally.
03:12How much do you ultimately expect to run on the stable coin network?
03:16And do you think every major payment company eventually need to launch their own stable coin?
03:21I wouldn't say every company would, but it certainly makes sense for MoneyGram.
03:26And the reason being, we are right now, we move billions of dollars around the world for our customers.
03:34And I think the one thing we see is that our customer relationship really is around the send and receive
03:39of those funds.
03:40What we believe we can do, though, is we launch MGUSD as we can offer other services for our customers,
03:46including the ability for them to store value in a U.S. paid asset.
03:51And then the other part is we also can build other services so they can use MoneyGram for their spending
03:56purposes, as well as hopefully in the future storing value within MGUSD on our network.
04:04And let's talk a little bit about geography, because my understanding is that MGUSD, it will be available in the
04:11U.S. first with eventual plans to roll out globally within the year.
04:15What regions will you be targeting first after the U.S. kickoff?
04:20Yeah, I think our ambition is to have it distributed around the world.
04:25But I think the first markets we'll be looking at will be Latin America.
04:29You know, those are environments where the customers can actually take advantage of what we're building with MGUSD, which is
04:36currency stabilization, peg to the U.S. dollar, as well as the ability to avoid a lot of FX volatility
04:45as well.
04:46And we're talking about countries and people that probably have not had access to as much financial services as a
04:53lot of the things that we take for granted in our country.
04:56And so I think it's going to be a good thing for everyone.
04:58And the last, we have around 30 seconds left here, Anthony.
05:01Could stablecoins eventually be a bigger business than remittances, in your view, in MoneyGram?
05:06Well, I think the way to think about it is that stablecoin would be a foundation of building our businesses
05:12in the future.
05:13So it's just, when you think about stablecoin, it's just a foundational layer, just like you have TCP IP for
05:20the Internet or anything like that.
05:21And then what we plan to do is build services on top of these stablecoins so we can give our
05:26customers a consistent experience and allow us also to develop products that are much faster and cleaner, especially if they're
05:33running on our rails.
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