Bloomberg 深度稿：西联汇款与 MoneyGram 推自有稳定币应对加密汇款冲击，但无新增事实

The biggest problem facing money-transfer companies like Western Union Co. and MoneyGram International Inc. can be boiled down to two numbers: four minutes and three days.

That’s how long Brendan Tonks, a 44-year-old plumber in South Sydney, said it took to send money to his family in the Philippines after switching to stablecoins, compared with his previous experience using Western Union a couple of years ago. He said his first transfer this new way also cost only a small fraction of what he had paid through the traditional service.

Now, the remittance giants are adopting that same crypto technology to defend their businesses and deepen customer ties.

Both have launched their own dollar-backed stablecoins, digital tokens designed to maintain a steady value against fiat currencies like the US dollar, and are expanding into digital wallets and cards. The goal is to get customers to do more than make a transfer, turning one-time transactions into a broader financial relationship that keeps funds on their platforms.

The shift underscores how much stablecoin adoption has disrupted the old-school money transfer business — and the inroads that crypto-based business models have made into real-world finance.

Founded in 1851, Western Union pioneered the first telegraph network across the US. Now its stock is trading near an all-time low, having plummeted 70% in the past five years alone. MoneyGram, a privately held company, is also showing signs of financial strain, with one of its loans quoted Friday around 71 cents on the dollar.

Tonks’s experience is just one example. Western Union and MoneyGram already let customers send money digitally, sometimes at lower costs and faster speeds than he encountered, depending on the country and payment method. Western Union says bank transfers can take anywhere from minutes to as long as five business days, while the World Bank put the average cost of a digital remittance at 4.59% in the third quarter of 2025. Stablecoin transfers can settle much faster, though recipients can still face fees when converting them into local currency.

Western Union declined to verify the details of Tonks’s transaction, saying fees and delivery times depend on factors including the countries involved, payment methods and the amount sent. “Customers are provided with applicable fees and estimated delivery times before completing a transaction,” said a Western Union spokesperson.

Stablecoin use is growing rapidly. Overall stablecoin payments reached at least $401 billion during the first eight months of 2026, up 42% from a year earlier, according to consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal.

Western Union launched its USDPT stablecoin in May and later partnered with financial-technology company Rain on a digital wallet and card. MoneyGram has followed with MGUSD and a card launched in Colombia and since expanded to El Salvador, with plans to roll it out more widely across Latin America.

“They don’t say they want stablecoins. What they want is the functionality of being able to store funds in a stable currency like the US dollar,” MoneyGram Chief Executive Officer Anthony Soohoo said.

MoneyGram is already using stablecoins in its foreign-exchange operations and is on pace to conduct about $3 billion of such trading through them annually, a company spokesperson said.

Western Union sees particular potential for stablecoins in markets where traditional financial services are harder to access. “We believe the greatest benefit could be in corridors where customers face challenges related to financial access, cross-border payments or currency volatility,” said Malcolm Clarke, global head of digital assets at Western Union.

MoneyGram’s financial pressure has been compounded by concerns over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown, which could weigh on US remittances. A company loan with $388 million outstanding that was trading near face value when Trump took office fell to as low as 57 cents on the dollar in February, as immigration enforcement intensified.

Western Union’s retail business relies heavily on newer migrants, who are drawn to its physical locations, ability to handle cash and familiar brand, making the company particularly vulnerable to shifts in migration patterns.

“New migration is the lifeline of our retail business,” Chief Financial Officer Matt Cagwin said on a July 30 earnings call.

Read More: Cash Losing Its Crown in the World’s Biggest Money Corridor

Digital competitors are also taking customers from the traditional providers. Western Union’s monthly active app users fell 10% in September from a year earlier, while MoneyGram’s dropped 9%, according to Sensor Tower data. Wise Group Plc.’s active users rose 9%. Downloads fell 2% for Western Union and 10% for MoneyGram, while Wise’s climbed 13%.

But new technology doesn’t necessarily mean customers will quickly change their habits. Ismail Ahmed, who founded money-transfer company WorldRemit and now runs financial app Odola, said the remittance industry has repeatedly seen technology advance faster than consumer behavior.

“Remittances have a history of overestimating digitization,” Ahmed said. “Even years after digitization, the majority of transactions through Western Union are still cash.”

Still, cross-border stablecoin volume jumped 64% to $135 billion in 2025, according to Alvarez & Marsal.

For traditional remittance companies, that growth threatens a longstanding source of revenue. Global remittance fees have remained above roughly 6% for a decade, according to Kumanan Ramanathan, managing director and co-head of crypto at Alvarez & Marsal.

“That’s the margin now under pressure, and it’s a big reason why some large remittance institutions want to own the infrastructure stack,” Ramanathan said.

Stablecoins aren’t necessarily cheaper end to end. MoneyGram and Western Union say controlling more of the process themselves can lower the costs of moving money into and out of stablecoins.

“If you are doing transactions within your own network, you don’t need to use a different stablecoin,” MoneyGram’s Soohoo said. “By building it within our own rails, we get faster settlement and manage the economics ourselves to deliver a lower cost and better experience for our consumers.”

There are risks to the strategy. If Western Union and MoneyGram push their own stablecoins while customers continue using established alternatives, the market could become increasingly fragmented.

“The challenge is that, all of a sudden, you have hundreds of stablecoins, and if there is a lack of interoperability between these stablecoins, you’ve created the same problem that we’ve traditionally had before,” said Paul Bances, a strategic adviser at TGB Advisory Group who previously held positions at PayPal Holdings Inc.and MoneyGram.

Creating their own stablecoins doesn’t necessarily solve another problem: persuading customers who have already left to come back.

Patrick Kilgannon, a 59-year-old HVAC specialist in Florida who sends money to family in Guatemala, uses Coinbase to send USDC, the dollar-backed stablecoin, instead. Western Union’s new stablecoin card caught his attention, but not enough to make him switch.

“I left Western Union because the fees were eating into every transfer, and I’d need to know what they’re actually charging before I’d go back,” Kilgannon said. “Right now, Coinbase and USDC are doing exactly what I need them to do.”