Stellar (XLM), MoneyGram and Western Union: Who Keeps the Fee?

Right, bull runners. So, listen. Say you send $200 home to your mom for her birthday. You tap send, and then the app says done, right? But, on average, about $13 of that never reaches her.

Some of it's a fee you can see, and the rest is hidden inside the exchange rate. So, you'll never see it go. And that's not me guessing. That's the World Bank's own number. In the figures it put out in April 2026, sending $200 cost about 6.4% on average, which is mad, because the target the world signed up to is 3% by 2030.

So, XLM holders, Western Union and MoneyGram take a cut every time your family sends money home. And the money transfer giants went crypto, right? MoneyGram built its own dollar on XLM's network, Stellar. So, who pockets the hidden fee? And if you own Stellar, I'll show you what it does, and here's what it won't fix.

By the end, you'll know where that $13 goes, why Western Union picked a different network to Stellar, and how to check what you're actually really being charged. Oh, and the first link in the description is something I'll get to in a few minutes. It's for anyone tired of other people taking a slice of their money, and it's probably changed things for a lot of people. My name's Rory. I've been trading crypto and forex since 2020.

It's given me a full-time income and the freedom to travel the world while I do it. But, hang on. If there's a fee you can see, where's the rest going? Well, it's the exchange rate. When you send money abroad, the company swaps it into another currency, right?

And there's a real rate for that, the one the big banks use with each other. But, most apps give you a slightly worse one and keep the gap. It's basically a fee that doesn't call itself a fee. In 2024, about $685 billion was sent home to poorer countries on the World Bank's estimate. And here's the International Monetary Fund on what the charges do to all that money.

One downside for those countries though, [music] is the cost of sending money through a service. Some charge a steep fee up to 35%. [music] Lowering the average service charge to just 3% would mean an extra $30 every year for low-income [music] and developing countries.

Up 35%, which to me is daylight robbery, even if it's all perfectly legal. That's money leaving someone's pay packet and just never landing at the other end, isn't it? So, let's bring it back to our own money. Say you send $200 home every month. That's $2,400 in a year, and at 6.4% about $150 of it never arrives.

That's $150 a year your family never sees, and nobody even sent you a bill for it. Like if you're bullish, let's run it.

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Hey Bull Runners, welcome back. Sending money home isn't like paying a bill, is it? It's birthday money, school fees, the doctor. And MoneyGram's own boss, Anthony Souhou, grew up seeing it. Well, here he is.

I did see it a lot around birthdays, around anniversaries, graduations. For a lot of cultures, sending money is a is the deepest sign of love and support.

And the deepest sign of love is the exact bit they take a slice of. It's the same with crypto, isn't it? A lot of us have got real money in coins just sitting there while the other people make money around it. And back in 2022, I watched the drop from the top land in my own portfolio, so I know that feeling. Am I telling you to buy Stellar?

No. There may be better opportunities for your situation, but if you're holding $50,000 or more in crypto that's just sitting there, that's what we fix at Altcoin Pro. We help you put the crypto you already hold to work in full self-custody on your own keys, so it can't be flagged, frozen, or wiped out. Hit the first link in the description, watch the short video, press the button, fill in the short form, and book your free 15-minute call. If you're on your phone, just tap more under the video, and it's the first link.

Someone on the team will look at what you actually hold, and if you're already well set up, they'll tell you that, too. And book it before the Christmas sending rush, because December's when a lot of families send the most money home, and Christmas Day is the 25th. Right, before we get to the big firms, here's one for your phone, and it takes 2 minutes. Next time you go to send money abroad, stop before you hit send, and look at the rate the app's giving you. Then, open Google and type in two currencies.

So, pounds to dollars, or whatever yours are, and look at the rate it shows you. That's the real one, the rate the banks use. Then, hold the two side by side. Say Google shows £1 buys $1.34, and the app offers you $1.30. That's 4 cents a pound looks like nothing, but it's 3%, and that's on top of any fee they've shown you.

Right, so what have the big transfer firms actually done? Well, let's start with MoneyGram, because it's been moving money for over 80 years. Back in 2021, it teamed up with the Stellar Development Foundation. That's a non-profit behind Stellar to move money using USDC. That's a digital dollar, or a stablecoin, which just means a coin that's meant to always be worth $1.

And in 2022, it started letting people swap crypto for cash and cash for crypto at its shops using Stellar. Then, on the 2nd of June, 2026, it launched its own digital dollar, MGUSD, issued on Stellar, which to me says they're not just dipping a toe in, they're properly committed. And on the 16th of July, MoneyGram became what's called tier one validator, which basically means it helps run the Stellar network itself. Its own post said it started building on Stellar 5 years back, and that it helps power it. So, that's a big old company not just using the network, but helping to run it, which to me is a proper vote of confidence.

Then, in September, it launched a stablecoin Visa card in Colombia. And Stellar's boss, Denelle Dixon, says MoneyGram built it with a card company called Rain on Stellar. So, someone in Colombia can get dollars from a family abroad and spend them on a card. The block had that one on the 10th of September. So, what about Western Union?

Well, it's 175 years old. And back in July 2025, its boss, Devin McGranahan, told Bloomberg that stablecoins were an opportunity, not a threat. But, listen to where he reckons the money is.

Last I checked, you couldn't spend stablecoin if you wanted to buy a Coca-Cola. So, converting stablecoin into fiat currencies, particularly in harder-to-convert currencies around the world, is an opportunity for us.

Did you catch that? You can't buy a Coca-Cola with a stablecoin. So, turning it back into cash is the opportunity for them. So, even when the digital dollar moves for next to nothing, the bit where it turns back into cash is where the fee lives. And to be fair to him, he's running a business, and businesses don't hand money back unless they have to.

But, it tells you exactly where they plan to keep earning from people like us. And on the 4th of May 2026, Western Union launched its own digital dollar, too, called USDPT. But, for XLM holders, the bit that stings is where they built it because it's issued by a crypto bank called Anchorage and it's built on Solana, not Stellar. And in early August, CoinDesk reported Western Union had launched a card for holding and spending stable coins as well. So, both giants are heading the same way.

They just picked different roads to do it. So, hang on. What does Stellar actually do? Well, think of it as a public road built for moving money. Anyone can use it.

A payment settles in about 5 seconds and the network fee is a tiny fraction of a cent paid in XLM. So, moving a digital dollar from London to Lagos costs basically nothing on Stellar itself. And that's genuinely useful because the slow, pricey bit in the middle where money hops from bank to bank across borders can shrink a lot. A payments firm called Borderless put stablecoin transfers of $200 at a median of about 1% in a report out in October against the World Bank's 6.36. That's about $2 instead of nearly 13.

But what it doesn't change is the two ends. Someone has to take your cash in and someone has to hand cash out at the other end. And they set the exchange rate while they're doing it. That same report flagged that how reliably the money actually gets paid out varies a lot. And Italy's central bank looked at stablecoin transfers in 2026 and found that they were fast, but not cheaper than the old way.

So, the road in the middle can be nearly and you can get stung at the toll booths at either end anyway. So, what does that mean for you and me? Well, if you send money home, the new digital dollar apps can be cheaper, but only if the rate they give you at each end is fair. So, the same check applies whatever the app's built on. Compare their rate with Google's, add the fee and that's your real cost.

Stellar can make the middle cheap, but it can't make a company pass that saving on to you. And here's a bit a lot of XLM holders miss. Because the network fee is so tiny, the companies can just cover it for you. So, ordinary people sending a digital dollar don't have to buy any XLM at all. Which means more people sending money on Stellar doesn't automatically mean more people buying the coin.

Right, the other side because I'm not going to sell you a dream. First, Western Union because one of the biggest names in the business went with Solana. Second, even MoneyGram isn't Stellar only. On the 11th of August, it switched on its cash in and cash out service on Solana as well. XLM got to nearly 90 cents back in January 2018.

And on the 16th of October 2026, it was trading around 17 cents. That's down about 80% and 24/7 Wall Street had it trailing Bitcoin in the first half of October, too. And fourth, like I said, the fees on Stellar are so tiny that even loads of payments don't add up to much demand for the coin. That's the catch with a cheap road because it's brilliant for the people driving on it, but a toll that small doesn't do much for the coin on its own. And fifth, none of these deals come with a promise.

MoneyGram can add more networks whenever it likes and nobody can tell you where XLM price goes next. Now, I bet someone's typing this underneath. Hang on, Rory. If Stellar makes money cheaper, surely XLM goes up. And look, it might help, but MoneyGram's been working with Stellar since 2021.

And on the 16th of October 2026, XLM was a long way below its 2021 high of about 80 cents. So, being used by a big name and the price going up are two very different things, aren't there. So, my honest take, Stellar is doing a real job. A company with over 80 years of moving cash helps run the network, and that's not hype. But, a cheaper road in the middle doesn't stop the big firms charging you at either end, and it doesn't push the coin up on its own.

So, if you hold XLM, know what it actually does, and don't assume every payment on it lifts the price. And look, the people who do best out of all of this are the ones who stopped letting other people hold and handle their money for them. One of our members, Julio, first bought crypto in 38. And in his review, he says he took major losses because his coins weren't stored securely. He taught himself most of what he knew from YouTube videos, and he says what helped him most was the one-to-one coaching with his coach putting the same thing a different way each time until it finally clicked.

Julio's experience is his own, and I'm not promising you the same, but that's what having people in your corner looks like. And he's not on his own in there. We've got members from all walks of life. A lot of those people protecting what they've built with weekly calls with our research team and one-to-one coaching. So, if you're holding 50 grand or more in crypto that's just sitting there, it's the first link in the description.

Book the free call before the Christmas rush ahead of the 25th of December. So, next time you send money home, check the rate before you hit send. Because the fee they show you is only half the story, and the other half is the bit they're hoping you'll never look at. Tell me in the comments. So, which app do you use to send money abroad, and has it ever stung you on the rate?

And look, none of this is financial advice, guys. It's just my take after a lot of digging. Crypto carries risk, and what's happened before is no guarantee of what comes next. So, stick with me, subscribe, and there's a new one every day. Thanks for watching, guys.

Keep your head, stack with purpose, and I'll keep you posted.

Oh.

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