MoneyGram International (MGI) continues its efforts to profit from the lucrative market for cross-border remittances. The payments specialist announced Friday that it is expanding its Visa (V 0.65%) debit card deposit service across Europe.
This effort is being made in collaboration with Checkout.com, whose solutions will help get MoneyGram payments made through the system into the hands of recipients in what the latter promises as "near real-time."
MoneyGram said its expansion means that users can effect such payments through its mobile app or web portal from 25 European countries.
Image source: Getty Images.
The company sees great potential in the almost-instantaneous peer-to-peer (P2P) payment segment on that continent. In fact, "We're already seeing significant customer adoption, and we expect it to help contribute to strong digital growth in the European market this year," MoneyGram CEO Alex Holmes said.
The international collaboration with Visa Direct is still relatively new. MoneyGram began offering cross-border payments from the U.S. through that system in 2019.
The focus on cross-border P2P feels like a solid and sensible strategy. MoneyGram, as ever, is not shy in plowing further into this segment. At the moment, the company says it can process such payments in over 200 countries and territories. Of these, 89 are what MoneyGram describes as "digitally enabled."
As for Europe, MoneyGram paints it as "one of the largest send markets" on the planet.
Investors obviously like this notable expansion of MoneyGram's Europe footprint. On Friday, the stock closed by over 7% higher, in sharp contrast to the slump experienced by the S&P 500 index. Meanwhile, Visa fell by 1.5% on the day.
