Western Union to acquire Ripple’s partner MoneyGram?

Western Union is reportedly planning to acquire MoneyGram - a deal that can have a noticeable impact on Ripple. According to a Bloomberg report, anonymous sources “familiar with the matter” said that Western Union had made an official takeover bid. MoneyGram is yet to make a decision.

In 2019, MoneyGram partnered with Ripple to leverage its XRP-powered cross-border payment product, On-Demand Liquidity, to process a part of its remittances. Ripple owns around 10% of MoneyGram’s common stock after investing $50-million in the payments giant last year.

Currently, Western Union is exploring XRP’s potential to power cross-border transactions. However, it isn’t very positive about the prospect. In June 2019, CEO Hikmet Ersek had said that the company’s early trials with XRP showed that using crypto was five times more expensive than relying on Western Union’s in-house system. This outlook, however, appears to be changing. In April, researchers at Credit Suisse reported that Western Union continues “testing and considering the use of Ripple (XRP) for cross-border [payments]” even though the company was “initially less bullish” on the technology.

Western Union and MoneyGram are two of the largest money-transfer companies in the US. MoneyGram has a market value of about $164 million and Western Union has a market value of approximately $8.5 billion per Bloomberg. 
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