Consumer Weakness Starting to Hit Travel, MoneyGram CEO Warns
Consumer Weakness Starting to Hit Travel, MoneyGram CEO Warns

Consumer Weakness Starting to Hit Travel, MoneyGram CEO Warns

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Consumer Weakness Starting to Hit Travel, MoneyGram CEO Warns

Over 70% of MoneyGram’s business is outside the U.S. The company is trying to learn what the impact of the tariffs will be for its business. The global worker is very resilient, and they are moving around to make sure that they work in best places to send money back home. And so in our network, what we find is if something goes down in one area, they get picked up elsewhere. And I think there’s going to be a lot more use in the global payment space. How do you feel about how people use it and how quickly do you think it can do it? I think it’s a little like the pandemic in some respects, where we’re creating our playbooks right now on the fly, because a lot of the movements in terms of the amount and size of some of these tariffs are are meaningful. We’re having daily discussions about how to do best in all ways. I think the anchor for us is to focus on the consumer, which allows us to be able to made sure that we’re anchored on the right things.

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I think there’s a lot more uncertainties in the markets. But one of the things I would say for the core consumer that’s interesting is that over 70% of our business is actually outside the U.S. And so when we look at that, one of the things we have noticed is the global worker is very resilient. And so as they are as we’re going through this process, what we find is that workers are moving around to make sure that they work in best places to send money back home. And then the other thing is global remittance or global payments is really a need, not a want. So as a result, I think that we still are trying to learn what the impact really will be for our business. You know, it’s interesting, there have been some fairly drastic currency movements around the world, but also here in the United States. Yep. What does that meant for you in terms of the people who are sending money overseas? Is it changed behavior at all? We are going back to the point that it’s more global payments is much more of a need versus a want. What we’re seeing is amounts are actually pretty stable. What it definitely means is the amount that goes back into the into the hands of the consumer might be less. And so we’re monitoring the situation very closely. And we hope that we learn a little bit more about it and then we can figure out the best way to serve our customers. So to the extent that there are cracks in the consumer right now, where are you seeing them the most? I think what we’re seeing is we’re seeing a little bit in travel in terms how consumers travel and where they’re going to. They’re definitely taking a little bit more shorter trips. And then outside of that, what we’re seeing is that they are going to areas where there is actually great exchange rates from where they’re going. And so, you know, both things that make common sense to individual, where you’re going to go, where your purchasing power is the best. And that’s what we’ve noticed. As a CEO who’s trying to navigate this tariff strategy, how do you navigate it? Have you created a playbook here to get through what the next few months might look like? Well, I think it’s a little like the pandemic in some respects, where we’re creating our playbooks right now on the fly, because a lot of the movements in terms of the amount and size of some of these tariffs are are meaningful. And so we’re monitoring with our team. We’re having daily discussions about how to do best in all ways. I think the anchor for us is to focus on the consumer, which allows us to be able to make sure that we’re anchored on the right things versus trying to make any short term gains. Yeah, you’re navigating this on a lot of fronts or navigating this from a consumer perspective. You’re navigating it from international business perspective. It’s interesting. I’ve heard you talk a lot about how a lot of your clients are also immigrant populations. How are they behaving right now, given the administration administration’s stance on immigration? Do you see a change in the way they’re interacting on MoneyGram? What we noticed is that a great thing about having a global payments network like we do just as a backdrop is we service customers in over 200 countries, 20,000 corridors with over 450,000 retail locations and 5 billion digital points. What we find about the our customers is that they have a tendency to be very resilient. So as one area might be a little bit less welcoming, they’re moving other places to work, so they are actually going to where the work is. We’ve seen huge movements in terms of the Middle East, for instance, I was just in Dubai recently. I think the population there, there was over 90% of that population that is actually immigrants or not. And it’s exciting to see where the pockets are. And so in our network, what we find is if something goes down in one area, they get picked up elsewhere. Fascinating. I want to talk a little bit more about MoneyGram itself, though, beyond what your clients are doing, because you have a lot of big plans yourself. You’ve talked about the desire to go public again. What does that timeline look like? Well, I would say it wouldn’t be this year, but I joined the company a little over six months ago, as was mentioned. And our goal is to take MoneyGram, which was a great company at one time that was public. I was taken private and actually go through a modernization and the digital transformation. And our goal would be hopefully, you know, over the next few years to take the company back public and take it much more as a digital first customer focused modern company in the global payment space. And I think there’s going to be a lot more use cases of how people think about MoneyGram and use it. How quickly do you feel like you need to pivot to the world of crypto also because you are seeing that Stablecoin bill making big strides in Congress. Do you feel like you need to embrace it in a much bigger way? Do you think that that’s the future of payments? Well, we certainly are embracing it in a big way. We actually think the Genius Act is a huge unlock for stablecoin and when we think about our business, actually, we think about it from A, B to B to C perspective. What we mean by that is STABLECOINS can make huge impacts for us in terms of how we think about running global treasury, the movement of actually money. In addition, it’s going to allow real time settlements and it’s actually going to make our supply chain of movement of money much more efficient. And then for our consumers, what that means is we’re can put a lot more money into the pockets. Because our goal would be to lower fees to drive higher volume.

Source: Bloomberg.com | View original article

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2025-05-29/consumer-weakness-starting-to-hit-travel-video

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