London Jan 9th, 2013 – MoneyGram  (NYSE:MGI), a leading global money transfer company, and WorldPay, a global leader in payments processing, risk and alternative payments, announced today the two companies have entered into a strategic alliance to expand MoneyGram’s direct-to-account money transfer service in up to 50 countries globally.

The new service will complement MoneyGram’s current direct-to-account product that enables consumers in multiple countries to send funds to bank accounts.

WorldPay is connected to more than 50 local currency clearing systems and has more than 400,000 merchants and 300 financial institutions as customers worldwide. Under the agreement, WorldPay will manage the payout interfaces for MoneyGram, providing the company with a single integration and connection point. This will enable MoneyGram to quickly and efficiently add additional countries and financial institutions to its growing direct-to-account service, allowing customers to send needed funds directly into a person’s account at a participating bank.

“This is an exciting business opportunity for MoneyGram that continues our strategy to partner with industry leaders to expand our network and offer new services for our customers,” said Tim Summers, MoneyGram’s head of strategic partnerships. “We look forward to working with an industry leader like WorldPay and are certain our customers will benefit from this continued expansion of our money transfer services.”

The alliance will allow WorldPay-affiliated financial institutions to more quickly launch services to receive funds from MoneyGram’s systems as they can now be easily and quickly connected. The WorldPay integration will significantly reduce service launch times.

Phil McGriskin, chief product officer, WorldPay comments: "The payment landscape is increasingly diverse and we work with a number of companies globally to offer the widest variety of payment services, including transaction capturing, merchant acquiring and transaction processing. The alliance between WorldPay and MoneyGram combines WorldPay’s experience of working with multiple payment types and MoneyGram’s expertise in international money transfers to offer a globally competitive direct-to-account transfer service.”

Further information (external website)