Traditional sending of money abroad is apparently facing a major technological change. Well-known financial companies, which people have so far known mainly thanks to classic branches, are moving their systems to digital networks (blockchain) on a large scale. This is no longer any experiment – this technology is becoming the new, faster, and cheaper standard for global payments.

MoneyGram and its new role in transaction verification

MoneyGram has taken a fundamental step and has become a direct operator (a so-called validator) of the global digital network Solana. In practice, this means that it no longer only passively uses digital currencies, but helps to directly manage them.

The company now approves transactions on this network, oversees the security of data transmission, and locks its own digital coins in the system, thereby guaranteeing the reliability of operations. At the same time, it has joined the Solana Developer Platform technology program, where it helps develop modern financial applications for smartphones.

5 years of preparation and its own digital dollar

For MoneyGram, which serves more than 60 million customers worldwide and has almost half a million branches, however, this is not a bolt from the blue. The company has been systematically focusing on digital technologies for more than 5 years.

This May, for example, it successfully launched its own stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar called MGUSD, which operates on the Stellar network. This tool allows people to hold dollar balances directly on their mobile phone, send them instantly across borders, and through the MoneyGram application flexibly convert them into classic cash in the local currency on the other side of the world.

Why is the old way of sending money expensive?

The largest competitor on the market – Western Union – has also moved in the same direction. It processes transactions in a huge volume of more than 100 billion USD annually. A few months ago, the company launched its own digital dollar on the Solana network under the abbreviation USDPT. It is testing it in Bolivia and the Philippines, while during 2026 it plans to expand it to more than 40 countries around the world.

The reason for this step is purely economic. The classic banking system has too many obstacles. Due to banking fees, lengthy processing, and the need to hold huge packages of money in reserve accounts abroad, approximately 6% to 9% of the total volume of money sent is unnecessarily “lost” in the old system. Digital dollars operate nonstop (24/7) and eliminate these hidden losses. For the financial companies themselves, this is also a profitable business – the management and backing of these digital reserves may, according to estimates, bring them an additional net profit of 2% to 3%.

Digital dollars as a new standard for companies and Latin America

This modern trend has long since ceased to concern only ordinary people who send savings to their families. Digital dollars are increasingly being used by companies themselves for fast purchases of goods and corporate cash management. The latest financial data from Latin America show that corporate transactions through these digital networks there increased by as much as 81% year-on-year, because managers are no longer willing to wait days for slow local banks.

Major changes in Africa and the internet future of payments

A similar rapid dynamic is also being shown by the African payments market. The technology company Ripple recently bought a stake there in the huge African payments network Flutterwave, which operates in 35 countries, with the aim of introducing modern digital payments there. The steps of leaders such as MoneyGram and Western Union clearly show that global financial flows are definitively leaving the old banking rails and moving to next-generation internet infrastructure.