MoneyGram's Stablecoin Visa Card Goes Live In Colombia

MoneyGram launched the MoneyGram Card on Thursday, a virtual Visa card that spends a stablecoin-backed dollar balance held in the MoneyGram app. It is live in Colombia, with more markets promised in the coming months.

The card keeps remittance money inside MoneyGram after it arrives. Recipients who collected cash and left can now hold dollars in the app and spend them at Visa merchants without converting to pesos. Rain, which supplies the card issuing, describes the change as "the recipient becomes the customer" in its post on the launch.

Three companies sit behind the product: Crossmint runs the wallets the balances live in, funds move over Stellar, and Rain connects the balance to Visa's network. MoneyGram picked Rain for a single API integration that fit the providers it already used, Rain said.

MoneyGram serves more than 60 million active customers across more than 200 countries and territories, and the card is available in one of them. Rain says the card spends at more than 175 million merchant locations and that MoneyGram is on pace to route roughly $3 billion of its annual FX trading through stablecoins. Cardholders can also send themselves funds from the balance and collect local currency at a MoneyGram branch; the company has more than 6,000 in Colombia, according to Crossmint, which runs the wallets the balances sit in.

"We're giving customers more freedom and control to manage their money, all in one place," said Anthony Soohoo, MoneyGram's chairman and chief executive. Rain's post on X put it as "the card completes the loop."

Promised Last September

MoneyGram announced the Colombia app on Sept. 17, 2025 and listed among the features coming "in the near future" the ability to "spend online or in-person in USD globally with linked Visa or Mastercard debit cards." Crossmint's release the same day carried the same line, marked "coming soon."

That feature arrived Thursday, on Visa only. A physical card that works at ATMs and in-person is due in late 2026, which leaves cash-out running through MoneyGram branches until then.

MoneyGram picked Colombia for the app because it is an inbound corridor where the peso has weakened against the dollar over the past decade, the 2025 release said. Colombia received $13.1 billion in remittances last year, up 10.6%, according to the Colombian presidency citing central bank data.

USDC At Launch

At launch, the MoneyGram Card will be powered by USDC. MoneyGram plans for MGUSD to power the MoneyGram Card in the near future, according to a MoneyGram spokesperson. “MGUSD was designed to be the foundation for a growing suite of financial services across MoneyGram’s global network,” they said.

The issuing bank is unnamed. Rain's site says cards are issued through partners licensed in their jurisdictions and that its banking services come from SSB, a US institution, which would not cover a Colombian program.

Free Until You Stop

The card carries no monthly or annual fee and no purchase fees at launch, per MoneyGram's product page, which adds that "an inactivity fee applies only if the card has no activity for 3 or more months." The page tells customers to "see the full Fee Schedule for details" and does not link one, and does not give the inactivity amount. Sign-up runs inside the MoneyGram app and requires identity verification.

The same page puts MoneyGram's retail footprint at "nearly 480,000" locations. Thursday's release says nearly 500,000.

Twenty-One Authorized Holders

MGUSD, issued by Stripe subsidiary Bridge on Stellar on June 2, has 25.2 million tokens outstanding held across 21 authorized accounts, Stellar network data shows. Another 338 accounts have opened trustlines the issuer has not authorized. The asset is permissioned: it requires issuer authorization to hold, and the issuer can revoke it and claw balances back.

USDC on Stellar stands at $346.8 million, and the chain holds $242.3 million in DeFi value, per DefiLlama. XLM traded at $0.177, down 4.3% over 24 hours on $169 million of volume, according to CoinGecko.

Rain's Second Remittance Giant

Rain now supplies cards to the two largest names in retail remittances. It launched Stablecard with Western Union in 37 markets on Aug. 4, a Visa card that spends Western Union's USDPT, and bought merchant wallet startup Ansa the following week. The company raised $250 million in a Series C led by ICONIQ in January at a $1.95 billion valuation, after a $58 million Series B led by Sapphire Ventures.

MoneyGram has worked with the Stellar Development Foundation and Circle since 2021, and has since spread its stablecoin work across other chains. It brought its cash ramps to Solana in August, became a Solana validator in June, and validates on Tempo and Midnight.