Stellar (XLM)

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One of MoneyGram's largest near-term products, which it expects to launch in early 2024, is a noncustodial crypto wallet on the Stellar blockchain network. A noncustodial wallet enables users to maintain sole control over the assets, such as a cryptocurrency, stablecoin or traditional currency. That potentially gives the user more flexibility over when they send funds.

The wallet will support instant payments and transfers between digital currencies and traditional money, and will not charge fees until June.

MoneyGram has offered crypto cashout services for about two years through partnerships. In 2021, it partnered with crypto exchange CoinMe to support crypto cashouts. An earlier partnership with Ripple dissolved during Ripple's regulatory dispute with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

MoneyGram's new crypto wallet could serve as an alternative to Ripple, which uses the technology that supports the XRP token to enable cross-border payments with faster processing times and less costs than using third parties to handle currency exchange and compliance. MoneyGram will offer access to cross-border payments compliance in addition to the wallet.

"The custodial wallet gives us an opportunity to expand crypto service with our core demographic, and change how consumers can move funds across borders," Holmes said.
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MoneyGram's CEO on cross-border payments: 'This is an expensive business.'

Alex Holmes talks about money transfers, the tough economy, and the role of crypto wallets in the firm's future.

www.americanbanker.com

Crypto services for the crypto illiterate. Could be a nice value driver for Stellar (XLM).

 

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Stellar (XLM) might be more efficient than Solana (SOL). If this works, it could be a strong growth driver for XLM.

 

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A couple of tidbits:

Companies that operate across geographical borders face significant operational and financial challenges in paying a global workforce. Fluctuating currency rates, transacting in multiple foreign currencies, and the manual nature of payroll administration for remote workers create friction for companies like BiGGER that rely on global operations to serve their customers. As these enterprises scale, human resources and treasury managers seek tools that streamline, automate, and reconcile payroll to minimize risk and operational costs.

BiGGER, an Australian company providing training and business planning to non-technical founders building and scaling technical startups, experienced exponential growth throughout 2023. In six months, it tripled its employee count adding a significant concentration of employees based in Argentina. In doing so, BiGGER realized there were some challenges in paying a dispersed workforce with its existing crypto payout solution. Using crypto to pay workers proved to be a faster and low-cost option for the company, but the process itself still left opportunities for improvement.

Each pay period, the staff would manually transfer funds from an operating account and issue individual payments to each employee. As the workforce grew, this manual process proved difficult to scale. New employees were required to provide their digital wallet credentials prior to their first payment in order to be added to the payroll. This was not only manual, but increased risks of user error during wallet creation and for administrators establishing a new payee.

BiGGER staff realized they needed a turnkey and intuitive solution to send cross border bulk payouts to their global workforce. Although costly and high-touch manual processing was the reality of BiGGER’s payroll administration, the release of the open-source Stellar Disbursement Platform
(SDP) enabled staff to quickly deploy an instance, sending bulk payouts with certainty and transparency in seconds. Processes that previously took 8 hours per month over multiple payroll cycles are now completed in minutes - such as reviewing payout amounts to include any withholdings, uploading a single csv file, and inviting employees to access funds. Employees can view and confirm funds immediately via Beans app, a digital wallet providing free global money transfers using stable digital assets.
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Stellar | Stellar | BiGGER Scales Globally with Efficient Payroll on Blockchain

Global team, seamless payroll? It's possible! BiGGER uses Stellar blockchain for transparent, cost-effective employee payments across borders. Discover the solution for your business.

stellar.org

 

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San Francisco, March 19, 2024 — The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), the nonprofit organization supporting the development and growth of the Stellar network, today announced that Soroban, the smart contracts platform on Stellar, is now live on the network’s mainnet, enabling anyone to build, deploy, and interact with Stellar-based decentralized applications (dapps). To encourage development on Soroban, SDF has committed to investing $100 million into projects leveraging the network’s smart contract capabilities in its pursuit to set a better standard where not only payments, but everyday financial services, are accessible to all. The fund has supported more than 160 projects to date.

Adding smart contract capability is the latest upgrade from the Stellar ecosystem’s application of blockchain technology to create equitable access to the global financial system. Having powered over $1.3 billion in transactions during Q4 2023 alone, Stellar has established itself as a leader in crypto payments, with its technology underpinning the digital asset activity of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and MoneyGram International (MGI), among other entities. The introduction of smart contracts via Soroban will enable more sophisticated financial products and services to operate on the Stellar network, in addition to settlements.

Soroban’s two-year testing period, which concluded January 2024, attracted 190 projects globally to its minimal viable ecosystem. During this time, SDF deployed approximately 15% of its $100 million Soroban adoption fund into supporting dapps spanning across lending and borrowing, insurance, auditing, and more. Projects building on Stellar include industry names Axelar, Allbridge and Band Protocol and deFi newcomers, Soroswap.Finance and Blend, to name a few.

SDF aims to deliver the tools and technology necessary to power a next-generation financial system — one that is both decentralized and real-world ready. Soroban opens the doors for decentralized applications to easily plug into the existing global financial market, without compromising speed or scalability. We look forward to seeing a variety of world-changing dapps built on Stellar.

Engineered in response to crypto industry demand and a vision to provide everyday financial services to all, Soroban is a faster, less expensive, and secure alternative to existing smart contract platforms. The platform offers comparatively lower smart contract fees by simplifying transactions and utilizing lower levels of computing power to process them. Further, Soroban is a “batteries-included” platform — with built-in contracts and host functionality, the solution makes it easy for anyone to build and deploy a decentralized application.

Stellar | Smart Contracts Launch on Stellar with $100M Allocated to Soroban Adoption Fund

Smart contracts on Stellar marks the network’s biggest upgrade in its 10-year history. Already a world leader in crypto payments, Stellar now supports decentralized finance (DeFi) and applications (dapps). The Stellar Development Foundation is deploying a $100M Soroban adoption fund.

stellar.org