Benzinga | May 12, 2021 10:47AM EDT

MoneyGram Will Allow To Buy And Sell Bitcoin With Cash In Partnership With Coinme Exchange

Cross-border payments giant MoneyGram International Inc. (NASDAQ:MGI) will now allow its customers to buy Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and other cryptocurrencies for cash at brick-and-mortar locations in the United States.

What Happened: According to a press release shared with Benzinga, MoneyGram partnered with cryptocurrency exchange and Bitcoin ATM operator Coinme to allow its customers to buy crypto with cash or withdraw it in 12,000 locations across 32 states.

The service will then be expanded to the firm's international locations later this year.

"This innovative partnership opens our business to an entirely new customer segment as we are the first to pioneer a crypto-to-cash model by building a bridge with Coinme to connect Bitcoin to local fiat currency," MoneyGram's chairman and CEO Alex Holmes said.

MoneyGram is no stranger to crypto, considering that the firm partnered with blockchain financial services firm Ripple in 2018 to use XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) -- the digital asset that Ripple created -- for cross-border remittances.

Price Action: MoneyGram is trading at $8.34 as of press time, 0.5% up after the news.

The stock's current price is nearly 24.5% higher than its May 6 price of $6.30, and its news sentiment, according to StockSnips data, is significantly bullish.

According to CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin's price increased by 4.5% from a low of $55,500 to a high of nearly $58,000 before correcting by 2.3% to its current price of $56,700 as of press time.

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