Ripple Finalizes $50 Million MoneyGram Investment

Payments startup Ripple has completed the acquisition of its $50 million stake in remittance platform MoneyGram, the companies announced Monday. 

According to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ripple, in its final payment, bought $20 million of MoneyGram equity at a price of $4.10 per share, more than a dollar per share over the stock’s current price of around $3.00. Monday’s investment completes a deal first begun in June 2019.

With the completion of the deal, Ripple owns just under 10 percent of MoneyGram’s outstanding common stock, “and approximately 15 percent on a fully-diluted basis including non-voting warrants held by Ripple,” the filing said. 

Under the original deal, Ripple made an initial $30 million investment, while MoneyGram in turn agreed to utilize Ripple’s products for cross-border settlements.

According to the filing, MoneyGram intends to use this capital inflow to support its operations, in particular as it expands its use of Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity product, the renamed xRapid payment system that utilizes the XRP cryptocurrency.

Since June, MoneyGram has begun using XRP to conduct transactions in Europe, Australia and the Philippines, and currently transacts roughly 10 percent of its Mexican peso foreign exchange trading volume, the filing said. 

In a statement, MoneyGram chairman and CEO Alex Holmes said the partnership was “transformative,” noting that the company could settle transactions “in seconds.” 

“This initial success encourages us to expedite expanding our use of On-Demand Liquidity,” he said. “I anticipate furthering our growth into new corridors and exploring new products and services.”

Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple’s CEO, added that his firm would support MoneyGram’s “further expansion” into the European and Australian payment corridors.