Alibaba is taking a big step into the U. S. — but it isn’t necessarily what you might think.
Its affiliate Ant Financial has revealed it is buying U. S. payments firm MoneyGram for $880 million. Ant Financial is paying $13.25 per share for NASDAQ-listed MoneyGram, a jump on the $11.88 price it held at the beginning of trading on Wednesday. The deal is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to close in the second half of this year.
Dallas-based MoneyGram is a service that handles cross-border currency transfers — remittance payments — in close to 200 countries, where it claims to have 350,000 physical locations.
