MoneyGram and Plaid announced on October 2, 2025 the expansion of their pay-by-bank partnership to European markets. The integration allows MoneyGram customers across Europe to connect and authenticate bank accounts through Plaid’s open banking infrastructure for funding international money transfers.
The partnership, which launched first in the United States, uses Plaid’s open banking technology to let consumers link their bank accounts directly rather than using cards or manual bank transfers to fund remittance payments. The European expansion supports MoneyGram’s global network spanning over 200 countries and territories, with approximately 500,000 retail locations and five billion digital touchpoints.
Anthony Soohoo, MoneyGram CEO, stated: “We’re working with Plaid to build faster, more powerful tools that make cross-border money movement simple.” Brian Dammeir, Head of Payments at Plaid, noted that Europeans want to “move money across the continent and beyond quickly and friction-free,” positioning the partnership as addressing a specific demand for reduced friction in cross-border payments.
The expansion reflects broader momentum in European open banking adoption. Plaid reported that open banking payments grew 53 percent year-over-year in the UK market, with 55 percent growth in new customer acquisition for its European business. The MoneyGram partnership demonstrates how open banking infrastructure originally built for domestic account connectivity is being repurposed for cross-border payment use cases, an application that aligns with the broader embedded finance expansion occurring across the payments industry.
