Alibaba’s Ant Financial to Acquire US Payment Service MoneyGram for $880 Million in Cash

Executive Summary

• On January 26, Ant Financial and MoneyGram announced that privately held Ant Financial would acquire publicly traded MoneyGram (MGI) for $13.25 per share, representing a total deal value of about $880 million. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2017.
• The announced merger would create a global payment powerhouse with combined revenues of more than $3 billion and bases in Asia and North America. It would also enable Alipay, the top payment network in China, to enter the US and enable MoneyGram to access China and the rest of Asia.
• MoneyGram operates a money transfer network of 2.4 billion bank and mobile accounts in addition to 350,000 physical locations. The company is expected to report revenues of about $1.5 billion for 2016.
• Ant Financial maintains a network of more than 630 million users, comprising 450 million Alipay users, plus another 180 million users through its partnership with Paytm, India’s leading mobile payment provider.