Paving the way ahead for bankless cross-border payments across Asia Pacific and globally for businesses of all sizes, and including underbanked individuals.
OwlTing Group, a Taiwan-based global blockchain fintech company, has announced that its unhosted digital wallet solution OwlPay Wallet Pro is now integrated with MoneyGram, to enhance the Wallet’s bankless on and off-ramp capabilities for seamless conversions between fiat currencies and USDC stablecoin.
Through this integration, OwlPay Wallet Pro now offers its users the functionality to cash-in from local fiat currencies to USDC stablecoin in over 30 countries globally across nearly 50,000 MoneyGram locations. The Wallet users will also be able to cash-out from USDC stablecoin to fiat currencies in over 170 countries at more than 375,000 MoneyGram locations. This integration is powered by MoneyGram Access, a global on/off-ramp service for digital asset wallets.
OwlPay Wallet Pro has also moved all individual wallets to the unhosted wallet model, allowing users access to passphrases for enhanced user security and accessibility. The updated Wallet is now available for iOS and Android on Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store.
OwlTing aims to address longstanding issues such as high fees, slow processing times, and limited access to traditional financial services of the cross-border remittance market and will play a vital role in providing a faster, secure, and cost-effective payment solution. While MoneyGram has reduced its average fee for traditional remittance customers to under 3%, paving the way to meet the United Nation’s 10.c target to reduce the costs of migrant remittance transfers to less than 3%, the World Bank estimates the remittance industry’s global average cost to be 6.65%.
“We’re seeing a surge of evolving needs from businesses that utilize international payments and from immigrants that send money home to help support their loved ones,” said Darren Wang, Founder and CEO, OwlTing Group. “By integrating with MoneyGram, OwlTing will make our vision possible and better support the financial resilience in underbanked regions such as Latin America and Africa. We can enhance the utility of USDC stablecoin in helping our customers hedge volatile fiat currencies in those regions.”
Bankless payments beyond borders
“OwlTing’s approach to digital payments aligns perfectly with our mission to enable seamless and accessible financial services across borders,” said Jon Lira, Head of Partnerships, MoneyGram International Inc. “It’s been thrilling to see MoneyGram Access expand globally since its launch in June 2022 and enable impactful use cases across Ukraine, Colombia and more. Now, we believe OwlPay Wallet Pro can grow exponentially through the MoneyGram network and become part of people’s daily lives.”
According to third-party industry reports, the global remittance market was valued at $50 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.5% from 2024 to 2033, highlighting the rising demand for affordable and efficient cross-border payment solutions.
OwlPay Wallet Pro aims to allow immigrant workers to transfer USDC to recipients abroad without involving bank accounts. Their recipients can hold USDC digitally in their wallets to combat inflation and exchange them for cash through MoneyGram whenever they need it.
To provide users’ peace of mind in payment transactions, OwlTing has continued to make legal compliance a cornerstone of its operation strategy. The Company announced that it is now licensed in 29 U.S. states, including the recent acquisition of a Money Transmitter License (MTL) in Utah, and it also obtained the ISO/IEC 27001 certification, underscoring its commitment to minimizing cyber risks and safeguarding users’ data.
This announcement follows OwlTing Group’s integration of OwlPay Wallet Pro with the Stellar blockchain to support USDC stablecoin in August 2024. The partnership potentially expands OwlPay’s reach to more than 8 million accounts on the Stellar network. Combined with the new integration with MoneyGram, OwlTing now offers a compliant and scalable payment platform in the broad ecosystem that serves both the US and global markets.
