Visa Expands MoneyGram Partnership to Mexico

Visa Inc. is expanding its relationship with MoneyGram International Inc. to grab a bigger piece of the remittance market.

The San Francisco card payments network said Wednesday that U.S. consumers will be able to send money to Visa cardholders in Mexico through MoneyGram retail locations. Visa last year formed a relationship with MoneyGram to send money to cardholders in Guatemala.

The U.S.-Mexico avenue "is a really important remittance corridor," Kelly Alpert, a senior business leader in charge of money transfer services for Visa, said in an interview on Thursday. "It's one of the largest in the world."

Recipients can get their funds on their Visa credit, debit or prepaid card. To send money, a person would need the recipient's 16-digit card number as well as identifying information required by MoneyGram, Alpert said.

According to World Bank data Visa cited, Mexico was the third-largest country for remittances in 2010, receiving an estimated $22.6 billion.

Visa aims to boost its presence in the U.S. money transfer market through its relationship with MoneyGram. Last year Visa announced a partnership with Bancomer Transfer Services Inc., a subsidiary of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA, to allow people to send money from the U.S. to cardholders in several foreign countries.

"Our relationship with Visa and ability to leverage its extensive global network provides MoneyGram with access to Visa account holders around the world," Pamela Patsley, MoneyGram's chairman and chief executive, said in a Visa press release Wednesday.

The money transfer service has been more widely available outside the U.S. for several years, as Visa made changes to enable its processing network to handle transfers to cardholders. To expand the service here, Visa mandated that its U.S. issuing banks be equipped to receive money transfers for debit and prepaid cardholders by October 2010. Alpert said because of technical requirements not all of its U.S. issuers have met that deadline. "We've made that a stated requirement in our rules," Alpert said. "We are currently working with all of the issuers in the U.S. to be compliant with that rule."

It has set an April deadline for the ability to receive transfers on a credit card.

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