MoneyGram CEO: Tokenization & Stablecoins Are Set To Explode (Why We're Betting Big On It)

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Alrighty guys, welcome back to Stabled Up, episode number 39, our premiere weekly Stablecoin show, powered by our friends at Fracks. Visit fracks.com to learn more about what they're doing with FRX, USD and more. Today we have Anthony Soohoo, chairman and CEO of MoneyGram, appointed in October 2024
He's leading the company's digital transformation and stable coin initiatives, drawing on 25 years of technology experience, Walmart, other Fortune 100 companies. Anthony, great to have you man.

**Anthony Soohoo** (0:27)
Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for having me.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:29)
It's definitely man. I mean, what a time to be bullish on tokenization and stable coins in this market. I mean, while we have so much riff raff around Michael Saylor and around what the price of Bitcoin is going to be or whether stretch is going to blow up, we have this mega, mega, mega super trend happening of tokenization and stable coin growth. And so Anthony, I know it's your first time on the show, CEO of MoneyGram would love to just give an understanding a bit about your background, what your kind of main prerogatives are at MoneyGram. And then let's kind of discuss this mega trend and we'll get into all the nuances.

**Anthony Soohoo** (1:09)
Yeah, sure. I mean, a little background on myself. I spent my whole career actually in technology. Maybe to even go back, I grew up in my byproduct of Silicon Valley. I grew up in San Francisco, learned the program when I was 12 And then I spent the first part of my career in tech, working at companies that you might have heard of, like Apple, Yahoo, early days of search engine, leading search engine called Ink to Me. And in the second part of my career, I've actually used that knowledge because of a startup that I started, got acquired by CBS and I helped them transform in the streaming.
And then it led me to lead the digital transformation at CBS as well as Walmart.
And the reason I ended up at MoneyGram is because when I looked at all the transitions that had happened, say from the Internet boom to the movement to mobile and cloud and everything that had happened on e-com, I saw the same opportunities here in terms of money movement globally, similar to maybe the way you and I would think about these platform shifts, which was a way to operate the network a lot more efficiently to bring down the cost, but also just drive mass adoption. I think that the point you bring up about so much noise in the current market is really true, but if you think about long-term where this stuff is going, I think you and I can probably agree that there's probably nothing more clear that currency is going to go more digital. I think tokenization is going to be happening everywhere.
The question is, how do you take advantage of that? That's why I joined MoneyGram.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:50)
Yeah. Yeah, man. I mean, a lot of these shifts have happened simultaneously, with regards to the shift towards e-commerce, the shift from analog to digital when it comes to stock trading, the shift now with AI and what that's happening or what that's causing it. Looking at the blockchain shift, I suppose, what was the light bulb moment for you when you came to MoneyGram, your previous experience?
You're looking at a business year that has done billions of dollars of revenue annualized consistently. You're looking at this trend of blockchain and this growth of 24-7 global markets, whether it be for settlement, for cross border, for remittances, etc. What was the clear light bulb, I have to join MoneyGram, I think this is the way that I can really make an impact in the company. What was that for you personally?

**Anthony Soohoo** (3:48)
Well, I spent a number of months looking at the opportunity. I think one of the things that's really appealing about financial services, especially payments as it goes online, is margins get better.
What I would say that most people lose sight of is whenever you go, most digital transformations, when you go digital from analog, you actually lose margin. Best example is when you think about client server-based software that goes to SaaS, they actually lose money or lose margins. When you think about e-commerce, the easiest example to use is when you have to ship a box at someone and say them walk into your store to fulfill, you lose margin. But when you think about tokenization and you think about digitizing payments, your margins actually go up because the business gets a lot more efficient because you're running on much more efficient rails. And there's also with what you brought up about AI, you have the benefit of leveraging AI for a lot of orchestrations over time, that also just kind of improves.