Moneygram Makes Money Transfers to India Easy with NEFT - Analyst Blog

Moneygram International Inc. (MGI), a leading money transfer company, declared that during the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) network processing hours customers will be able to send money to all rupee-denominated bank accounts in India within three hours.

Shares of Moneygram gained 5.1% in the last two trading session and closed at $8.99 yesterday reflecting investors' optimism over the company's strategic initiatives.

Established in 1998, Moneygram offers services in more than 200 countries worldwide generating revenues of $1.5 billion annually. The services in India were launched on Sep 29, 2011, in selected post offices after The Department of Posts entered into an International Cooperation Agreement with MoneyGram, USA.

Utilizing NEFT, the company's agents will be able to offer customers across the world a speedy and secured way of sending funds directly to Indian bank accounts at exceptional exchange rates. Moneygram will now offer bank account deposits to four of the world's largest payment receive markets — China, India, Mexico and the Philippines.

This marks a significant step for the company following closely on the heels of the launch of a new service – M-PESA – Kenya's leading mobile money transfer solution where customers residing in over 90 countries outside Kenya can send funds directly to it.

The service in India will be in collaboration with Axis Bank, one of the largest banks in the country. Moneygram by virtue of its tie-up with Axis Bank will have access to NEFT, a nation-wide Indian banking payments system. This will enable its customers worldwide to send money transfers directly into rupee-denominated bank accounts with the help of NEFT's outstanding efficiency and speed.    

Besides Axis Bank, customers can transfer funds to Punjab National Bank, ICICI, HDFC, SBI etc. The speedy transfer of money can take place only during NEFT processing hours which are Monday to Friday between 8:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. (Indian Standard Time), and Saturday, 8:00 a.m. to 1:00pm (Indian Standard Time).

Moneygram has been consistently expanding globally and introducing new services to its customers in order to make money transfer easy from any corner of the world. Last month, the company expanded money transfer facilities in Australia with additional self-service kiosks which have multi-lingual capabilities allowing customers to stage transfers at the click of a button. It also expanded it services in Ukraine after signing a deal with one of the largest banks in the country – Privatbank.

Currently, Moneygram holds Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell). However, its expansion initiatives along with the introduction of various services to facilitate customers in transferring money are likely to encourage analysts to raise their estimates leading to a consequent rank upgrade.

Other Stocks to Consider

Better-ranked stocks include Blackhawk Network Holdings, Inc. (HAWKB), General Finance Corporation (GFN) and Synchrony Financial (SYF). All of these stocks hold a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

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