MoneyGram and CoinMe Launch Partnership to Expand Access to Bitcoin

MoneyGram International, one of the largest P2P payment and money transfer company, has tied up with Coinme Inc., the largest crypto cash exchange to enable cash funding and payout of crypto purchases.

These 2 companies would collaborate so that users would be able to buy bitcoin using cash within the US and hence this enables thousands of point-of-sale locations in the US would be able to use bitcoin for their transactions.

MoneyGram has a modern, API-driven payments platform and this would utilise Coinme’s crypto exchange liquidity and experience to help businesses and users to perform transactions using bitcoin. Users would be able to buy bitcoin using cash, hold and also sell bitcoin and get cash back. This market opportunity is expected to be very big as there are less than 20,000 cryptocurrency kiosks in the world.

“This innovative partnership opens our business to an entirely new customer segment as we are the first to pioneer a crypto-to-cash model by building a bridge with Coinme to connect bitcoin to local fiat currency,” said Alex Holmes, MoneyGram Chairman and CEO. “Our unique, global network is an incredibly valuable asset, and we’re excited to open our platform to Coinme as we increasingly look to capture new growth by monetizing our network to new use-cases.”

This partnership is expected to grow to use and trade other cryptocurrencies in a very large number of point-of-sale locations around the US and this is expected to further boost the interest around crypto.

“MoneyGram has spent more than 80 years building one of the world’s largest P2P payment networks,” said Neil Bergquist, Coinme CEO. “By integrating its global infrastructure with our licensed crypto exchange technology, we can enable the purchase and sale of cryptocurrencies across its system using cash. This is a major milestone for the bitcoin and cryptocurrency communities, and for the millions of people who will benefit from a trusted, easy and affordable onramp to digital currency.”

The combination of Coinme and Moneygram would give the users added confidence while buying and selling bitcoin in cash and as the confidence grows, the volume and the number of transfers are expected to increase along with the awareness surrounding bitcoin in the US. With both companies being very large and with MoneyGram having branches in many countries around the world, this opens the possibility of this partnership extending across the world which would also help in the growth of the crypto industry as a whole.