Welcome, we are here at Money 2020 Europe in, in, in Amsterdam, and I am very pleased to be joined by Anthony Suho, the CEO of MoneyGram.
Anthony, welcome.
Thank you, thanks for having me.
So, you became CEO late 2024.
We're just over a year in.
Um, you were brought in with this real mission for sort of re-founding the business.
Um, what does transformation look like a year in?
Yeah, maybe I should redefine or define what refounding means because typically you hear companies and executives and boards say they want their employees to think like owners of the business.
Well, refounding is just a double click on that, which is we want our employees to think like founders because in a world where right now we have AI kind of coming in and you also have this whole movement of digital currency, what does that mean for future payments?
And when You have a chance to refound a company, I think all of us feel ownership inside the organization to rethink how we do business.
And so that's the purpose of it.
And so after a year, what I would say is that we now operate much quicker, much faster, and we've adopted a lot of new technologies, including the announcement that we made here where we launched MG USD and I could talk a little bit more about that if you want.
Well, let's go straight into that because you opened.
Money 2020 with your keynote.
I mean, it's a great 3 days ahead with so much great content, but how cool to be kicking it off.
Tell us about this announcement.
Yes, so maybe the first thing I would want to say is that when you think about this announcement that we made for MGD, it was really 5 years in the making.
It was not one of overnight successes because the company had been thinking about how to apply.
You know, blockchain to our network, and what I would say is that the very first thing we made a decision on is that we decided to rebuild our entire infrastructure on blockchain.
And when we do that, what we wanted to do with it was then also launch MGUSD, which is a native US dollar sabercoin.
And the reason that matters is we're going to build all products on our network on top of this framework foundation image.
MGUSD plays a very important part.
The final thing I would say is that when we built, when we're thinking about MGOSD, it is really not for traders and institutions, which The majority of what stablecoin has been about, we're really focused on the end user consumer, and I think we're the first company to really do that, and we're going to do it at scale.
And so what that means is you're going to have a mother who wants to send funds back to her family in the Philippines who can do that over our rails on Standard Coin.
And then we're going to allow a local business owner who might be living in a world where their local economy currency has gone down by 20% and they're going to have much more stability.
Because they're going to have a stable dollar balance on MoneyGram, and that's the key unlock.
I think that's so fascinating because as you mentioned, we've seen stablecoins really make their way in the crypto trading space.
Now clearly the institutional appetite for it, lots of narrative about where the transformation is, but this application is slightly different and certainly important for understanding the wide change across the landscape.
I want to ask you a little bit about.
Change and about that focus and you've spoken openly previously about being brought up in an immigrant household, the importance of cross border payments.
Talk a little bit about where the pressure points are there in cross border and what needs to be fixed, why stablecoins addresses those problems.
Yes, so if we take a step back, I think for any customer, but specifically for the remittance customer, what they want to make sure is that they can.
When they send up funds to their family, they want to send it there, uh, in the quickest fashion possible because you're talking about typically helping pay rent or helping pay tuition and so you want it when you send it, you want to be able to track it, but you also want to get it there as quick as possible.
The second thing what you want to do is you want to be able to send these funds in the lowest cost way and so putting as much dollars in it as possible.
I would say that's also important and then.
Third is what you want to do is you want to do it within a framework where you feel like it's safe and secure, and those are really the value propositions that we try to deliver on for our customers at MoneyGram.
Having coming from an immigrant household where I personally saw my parents send money back to their family, I think I have a deeper appreciation and empathy for the customers that we have.
They're all hardworking people around the world, and they move to where the work is.
And when they have that opportunity to support.
And send funds, it's not a transaction in their mind.
They're actually sending love or a signal or a note of I'm sending support out of my compassion and love, and as a company that supports this, we have to make sure we show that type of empathy and compassion as well.
Absolutely.
And as you say, this is, this is a key part of that.
Working part and everyone deserves to be able to trust that the rails on which they are sending their money is being done in the best way for transferring that value.
And gosh, to your point about the Philippines, you know, with everything going on in the Strait of Hormuz Hormuz at the moment, that question of being able to send money at a peak time.
To, to, you know, be able to reserve the oil, rice, whatever it is, is crucial, um, crucial for the Philippines.
So thank you for sharing that.
What do you feel the next 2 to 3 years?
I mean, we've seen extraordinary transformation over the last few years.
If you look 2 or 3 years ahead now with the use of AI with these stablecoin rails, what do you think the landscape looks like, and maybe let's speak both from the perspective of your growth across Europe, but also that wider global perspective.
Yes, sure, so I think that when we look at the future.
Of what it's going to look like over the next 2 to 3 years, I would say that the consumer is going to be much more empowered.
I think that we'll have much more financial tools for everyone else around the world because if we think about it, a lot of products and financial tools typically have been people that already have access to great banking services, I think.
Uh, what our mission is, and we believe we will be successful in terms of doing this, is provide access and type of financial services for folks that have been left out, which is billions of people around the world, and our mission of moving movement and building our whole infrastructure around blockchain is a step in that direction with MGUSD being a huge, huge foundation.
For our 60 million active customers that rely on us, and we think it's going to be a pretty bright world in the next 2 or 3 years, so I'm very excited.
And we're very excited to what great things we can expect from MoneyGram and the brand as a whole and as we move forward.
It's fantastic.
Thank you and thank you for joining us.
Thank you.
