MoneyGram launched MGUSD on June 2, a native U.S. dollar stablecoin that will sit at the center of its global payments network and anchor a widening set of financial services for cross-border senders and people shut out of traditional finance.

The token issues natively on the Stellar blockchain and integrates directly into the MoneyGram app through a self-custodial wallet, giving customers a dollar-denominated balance they can hold, move and convert into local currency on demand. MGUSD goes live first in the U.S. market, with MoneyGram planning to scale it globally as it continues building its payments infrastructure on blockchain rails.

The Plumbing Behind MGUSD

A set of partnerships underpins the launch. Bridge, a Stripe company, serves as the regulated, GENIUS Act-ready issuer. M0’s smart contract infrastructure handles minting and burning of MGUSD tokens, which deploy on Stellar at launch. The company holds the tokens in Fireblocks wallets that send to individual customer wallets embedded in its app, an arrangement that builds on the stablecoin settlement infrastructure MoneyGram brought in through Fireblocks late last year.

MoneyGram positions MGUSD for people facing inflation, currency instability or limited access to reliable financial services rather than for crypto-native users. The token gives those customers a stable balance they can access around the clock and convert into local currency whenever they need it. That use case already has a live precedent in the USDC-powered app MoneyGram launched in Colombia, built on Stellar to shield recipients from peso volatility through self-custody wallets.

Anthony Soohoo, Chairman and CEO of MoneyGram described this saying:

“The stablecoin market has largely focused on the asset itself. MoneyGram is taking a fundamentally different approach. Starting with our distribution platform, we’re using stablecoin as a foundation to build future applications on our global network.”

Distribution Does the Heavy Lifting

MoneyGram serves more than 60 million active customers across one of the world’s largest payments networks, reaching nearly 500,000 retail locations, with over 70% of transactions now digital. That omnichannel footprint connects physical cash access and digital wallets in a way few rivals can match, letting MGUSD arrive with distribution and reach already in place.

The token extends MoneyGram’s five-year partnership with the Stellar Development Foundation, which has already brought stablecoin-powered money movement to market. MGUSD moves that work into issuance, balance infrastructure and ecosystem-wide utility, the same direction the company signaled when it became the anchor remittance validator on Tempo, the Stripe and Paradigm Layer 1 network.

Chief Product and Technology Officer Luke Tuttle described the build as a ground-up effort, saying MoneyGram spent the past year re-architecting issuance, orchestration and settlement so that “a digital dollar could move through it as naturally as cash moves through our agent network.”