Western Union Chief Says Stablecoins Aren’t a Threat

The head of Western Union reportedly views stablecoins as an opportunity rather than a threat.

In an interview with Bloomberg News Monday (July 21), CEO Devin McGranahan said his company and customers would benefit from anything that allowed people to make faster, less costly cross-border transactions.

“Last I checked, you couldn’t spend stablecoin if you wanted to buy a Coca Cola, so converting stablecoins into fiat currencies, particularly in harder to convert currencies, is an opportunity for us,” McGranahan said.

He added that Western Union was “investigating how we might offer stablecoin products in our digital wallets to our customers around the world” in partnership with other companies.

The interview also touched on the subject of immigration, and whether the Trump administration’s crackdown had affected Western Union’s business.

McGranhan said there had been some slowing, but added that the company’s business is 60% outside the US, and the “dynamics outside the US have been more positive in the last couple of quarters than they have been inside the US.”

His comments on stablecoins come as the digital currencies move further into the financial mainstream, particularly as the first major cryptocurrency bill — the stablecoin-focused GENIUS act — was signed into law last week.

As PYMNTS wrote earlier this week, the changing landscape now has many B2B and enterprise firms wondering what role the new payment mechanism could play in their operations.

“After all, stablecoins were never meant to replace your credit card at the corner store. That’s a nice story for crypto optimists, but it misses the real utility taking shape in the shadows of the global economy,” that report said. “Where central banks wobble, currencies inflate and cross-border wires take days, stablecoins offer something more basic: a dollar global firms can actually use.”

For enterprise users, PYMNTS added, this environment brings about a new era of trust. The digital dollars these companies use to pay contractors or settle trade balances in other parts of the world have gone from “Wild West tokens” to federally recognized financial instruments by the world’s largest economy.

“But at the same time, for businesses leveraging stablecoins, whether for global B2B payments, instant invoice payments, or even payroll, the irrevocability of the mechanism, and the new-ness of its end-user experience, could create a new battleground,” the report added.