Cryptocurrencies “highly probable” to be the future of international money transfers, MoneyGram executive says

Cryptocurrencies are likely to be the future of cross-border money transfers, MoneyGram’s global head of product and innovation Youri Bebic has said in an interview with The Institute for Robotic Process Automation and AI.

Currently, companies do not move money across borders when a client makes an international money transfer, Bebic explained. “The money’s already there. We pre-fund bank accounts all over the world, and then we do value transfer,” he said, noting that this method is comparatively faster. However, if cryptocurrencies were used, pre-funded bank accounts would no longer be necessary; instead, cryptocurrency exchanges could be used “to sell cryptocurrency against local currency and deposit that into the bank account or give it in cash for our user,” Bebic said.

At the moment, he added, the biggest obstacle to achieving this is the lack of liquidity and underdevelopment of some regions. However, he believes it is “highly probable” that this will be the future of money transfers. 

The money transfer company has already piloted several solutions using cryptocurrencies and done a proof of concept with Ripple.