MoneyGram has launched its first stablecoin-backed Visa card, putting a dollar-linked digital balance into everyday spending at any merchant that accepts Visa. The MoneyGram Card went live in Colombia on September 10 as a virtual card inside the company’s mobile app, with support for Apple Wallet and Google Wallet. A physical card with ATM withdrawals is planned later in 2026.
The card is backed by stablecoins rather than a bank deposit. Circle’s USDC is the initial settlement asset, and MoneyGram plans to add its own MGUSD token, which the company launched on the Stellar network in June. Settlement runs on Stellar, with payments infrastructure firm Rain providing card-issuing rails and Crossmint supplying wallet functionality.
How the card works
Qualifying customers apply inside the existing MoneyGram app without opening a separate bank account. They hold a dollar-denominated balance, spend it online, in stores or through tap-to-pay, and can also send the balance to themselves and collect local currency at MoneyGram retail locations. That last feature links the card to one of the company’s core assets: a cash-out network of nearly 500,000 locations worldwide.
Company leadership framed the launch as a shift from moving money to helping people use it. The World Bank’s September 2025 analysis found debit cards are the cheapest instrument for receiving remittances, at 3.61 percent of the transmitted amount, which is the cost bucket this product is aiming at. By comparison, traditional remittance corridors can cost several times that figure depending on the route and payout method, and cash pickup historically sat at the expensive end of that range.
Colombia first, for a reason
Colombia is a major remittance destination with large inflows from the United States. A dollar-stable balance that can be spent locally or cashed out through an existing agent network targets customers who already receive transfers through MoneyGram and want more flexibility after the money arrives. Expansion is planned first across Latin America, then other markets, though the company has not published country timelines.
The choice of Colombia also reflects the country’s regulatory posture. Colombian authorities have allowed crypto payment products to operate under existing financial rules, which made a first live market easier to arrange than in markets where stablecoin cards face explicit bans or pending legislation. MoneyGram already runs a large agent network in the country, so distribution was not a constraint.
The remittance race is now a card race
The competitive context matters. Western Union announced its own Stablecard with the same infrastructure partner, Rain, last month. SoFi launched a stablecoin called SoFiUSD. Visa has been integrating stablecoin prefunding into Visa Direct, and banks MVB and Velocity joined that settlement network this month. Stablecoin card spending volume surpassed $1.1 billion in August, according to PaymentScan data cited by Crypto Economy.
That is small next to the trillions that move through card networks annually, but the direction is what executives are watching. Each new card program adds issuance volume that settles on-chain rather than through correspondent banking, and Visa’s own integration work suggests the networks see stablecoin settlement as a cost line worth attacking. MiniPay, the mobile wallet built off the Opera stack, launched its own stablecoin debit card earlier this year, and Cardless partnered with Coinbase on an embedded credit card. The pattern spans startups and incumbents alike.
Part of a bigger stablecoin buildout
The card sits inside a broader MoneyGram push into blockchain payments. In June the company launched MGUSD on Stellar, issued through Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure firm owned by Stripe. In August it announced a link with a Solana wallet to expand its crypto ramps, and MoneyGram is listed as a partner in Open USD, the Stripe-led revenue-sharing consortium.
CEO Anthony Soohoo presented the card at Consensus 2026, describing it as giving customers more freedom to hold, access and spend their money. The framing is careful: this is not a traditional debit card tied to a fiat account, and the company presents the stablecoin backing as a way for customers to control when they hold dollars, spend them or convert to cash.
What it changes for users
For remittance recipients, the practical difference is timing. A transfer that lands as USDC can sit as a dollar balance without an immediate conversion to local currency, which matters in markets where the peso’s direction is uncertain. The cash-out option preserves an escape hatch for people who still need physical money, which is where many stablecoin products aimed at emerging markets have fallen short.
There are trade-offs on the other side. A stablecoin balance carries none of the deposit insurance that a bank account offers, so customer protection depends on how the issuer structures reserves and redemption. MoneyGram has not published detailed reserve disclosures for the card program, and consumer groups in several markets have already asked regulators to apply e-money rules to stablecoin card products.
The open questions are regulatory and operational. Colombia’s financial regulator has been constructive on crypto rails, but stablecoin-backed consumer cards will draw scrutiny as volumes grow. And the product’s success depends on whether remittance customers actually want to hold dollars rather than convert immediately, an assumption the industry has been testing for years.
MoneyGram’s move follows a pattern across payments: the infrastructure went live quietly over the past year, and now consumer brands are competing to put it in front of retail users. With Western Union, Visa, SoFi and Stripe all active in the same stack, the stablecoin card race is no longer a pilot phase. Colombia is the first test of whether remittance users adopt it at scale, and the physical card with ATM access later this year will show whether the company can serve customers who never touch an app at all.