00:00You've just launched Ramps on Solana, which is a global crypto to cash service that lets people
00:04convert stable coins to local cash at your many retail locations. Explain what Ramps is and why
00:11you're doing it on Solana when in the past you've built on the Stellar network. Yeah, so we see a
00:17future for payments where it's going to be very open. And I think our goal would be to provide
00:23access to where the customer is. So I would say the biggest announcement we've made with Solana
00:28is really about access to provide all their developers to be able to build on our
00:33MoneyGram network. And what we mean by that is that anyone who is building on a Solana
00:38blockchain can use our what we call our off ramp or our ability to put cash in or cash out
00:44in any of
00:45our 500,000 retail locations. And in many respects, what we see is we're trying to connect the real
00:51world with the digital world as part of this announcement. Great. Anthony, I wanted to ask you a question
00:57about when, you know, folks that have been observers about the remittance market, there are two major
01:01players in this business. You know, you guys and Western Union seems like a two horse race. Of
01:07course, you've got a lot of other players in the space as well. And both of you, congratulations on
01:11the efforts that you particularly are doing in the stable coin space. So give us a sense, like two years
01:16out, when we look back in what's going on in this space, do we see that MoneyGram and Western Union
01:21still
01:22being the two dominant players in this space? Are there going to be other players in that space? Like, give
01:25us a sense of
01:26what is the larger market, you know, both of you and other players as well? How do we sort of
01:30look
01:31back two years out? Yeah, that's a great question, D. I would say that the way the world I see
01:38is that
01:40we offer and the biggest thing that we offer at MoneyGram is actually the idea of trust and access.
01:46And what I mean by that is when you think about sending money, certainly there's a world where you
01:51you can imagine that you can build an app to send from person to person. But in payments,
01:57it's highly regulated, not just within states, within countries. And there's a whole bunch of
02:01things of complexity that we need to do in terms of making sure the payments are compliant, making
02:06sure that it's heavily regulated and we follow the laws of land. So when I look out two years,
02:12I still see that there's dominant players who are here today will be there tomorrow as well.
02:18Now, the thing I do see is that the idea of sending a payment is going to be much easier.
02:22There's going to be many more choices. Consumers can choose between sending it in fiat or sending
02:28it through digital currencies. And I would say it's going to be much more seamless across that
02:33whole financial system where in addition to maybe offering payments, a consumer would use
02:39those payments to be able to spend in their local market and have that translated with a service
02:44such as ours in real time. What that means is it's going to be a boon for consumers because I
02:50think
02:50the cost is going to be lower. I think the timing and how things get settled is going to be
02:55faster.
02:55And I think everyone's going to win it.
02:58Yeah, I think just a follow up question on that. I mean, you know, one of the big advantages you
03:02guys
03:02have is massive footprint globally, right? 200 countries, 500,000 endpoints, merchants.
03:10And yet your starting point and your cost price for sending a global remittance is about $1.89
03:15compared to stable coins, which is near zero. At what point does the global footprint,
03:21the distribution network that you've created over the last 20, 30 years tend to become, you know,
03:27a drawback? Like, or do you expect it to be, you know, kind of a positive factor going forward
03:32as it has been in the past?
03:33I think it's going to be a positive factor. And I especially believe in this day of trust.
03:38The thing to remember is that we at MoneyGround, while we have these 500,000 retail locations,
03:43we also have billions of digital endpoints as well. And maybe the way to kind of think about it is
03:48not a question of or, it's really having these physical locations is an and thing. And what I mean
03:55by that is that a consumer can choose to do their transactions currently online, or they can
04:03go into one of these retail locations to do it. And sometimes what we're seeing, starting to see
04:07is that there's a behavior, what we also see in the physical retail locations, where they're doing
04:12the transaction or at least the entering of information online, and then they're going to
04:17physical locations to hand money over to an agent because of that trust. It's playing out the same
04:22way if you think about it in the retail space where people place orders online and they walk to the
04:28store and sometimes pick up. And I see that there are going to be many variations of that
04:32playing out in the future. And as a result, I think physical locations, it's going to be a big
04:37plus. Anthony, just one last question. We only have about 30 seconds. What would have to happen for you
04:42to perhaps shrink that physical footprint and go fully digital? Well, I think maybe the answer to it is
04:49I don't see a day where we will. Apple, one of the biggest digital companies around, I think they're opening
04:54more and more stores. And it comes down to the idea that we have full service with physical people you
05:00can
05:00talk to or you can do it self-service online. We want to give our consumers that option and we're
05:05excited
05:05about the future.
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