The Stellar Development Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on developing the Stellar network, is reportedly working with global private equity firm Advent International to buy MoneyGram, a leading remittance company as reported by Bloomberg.
At this point, it is not clear how the negotiation is going.
Stellar vs Ripple Competition
MoneyGram has terminated its main partnership with Stellar competitor Ripple because it was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in December for allegedly illegal XRP sales.
As reported by U. Today, the San Francisco-based distributed ledger technology company then began selling all of its stake in MoneyGram.
Ironically, Stellar was founded by Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb in 2014 when he left the company due to disputes with other executives.
McCaleb received 8 billion XRP tokens for his role in founding the OpenCoin company, renamed Ripple Labs. After planning to sell the tokens, he eventually signed a seven-year agreement with Ripple Labs that prohibits programmers from selling 1.5% of daily XRP transaction volume on a daily basis.
Stellar and Ripple have a lot in common and have faced tough competition for many years, partly due to the dramatic events surrounding their co-founders. The MoneyGram acquisition could further ignite hostility between the two camps.
Other Acquisition Attempts
Rumours of a possible MoneyGram takeover have been circulating for many years. Western Union reportedly made a takeover bid last year.
In 2017, Alibaba’s Ant Group attempted to acquire MoneyGram for $1.2 billion, but the transaction was blocked by U.S. regulators.