US-based money transfer giant MoneyGram has blamed an unspecified “cybersecurity issue” for a multi-day ongoing outage affecting the company and its users.
“We have identified a cybersecurity issue affecting some of our accounts,” MoneyGram said in a post on X on Monday. [sic] The company previously said the issue was caused by a “network outage.”
“Upon detection, we immediately began an investigation and took protective steps to address the issue, including proactively taking offline systems affecting network connectivity,” MoneyGram's latest update said. “We are working with leading external cybersecurity experts and coordinating with law enforcement.”
MoneyGram is the world's second largest money transfer company, serving more than 50 million people in more than 200 countries and territories each year. MoneyGram processes more than $200 billion in transactions annually. In 2023, MoneyGram was acquired by private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners for $1 billion.
MoneyGram has not confirmed the nature of the cybersecurity incident or said whether customer data was affected.
The incident began on Friday and appears to have had a widespread impact on the company's operations: customers are unable to make payments in person or online, and both the company's website and app remain down at the time of writing.
A MoneyGram spokesperson could not be reached for comment, and TechCrunch received an error message saying the email was undeliverable.
The outage also appears to have affected MoneyGram's partners around the world.
The Bank of Jamaica said on Monday that “remittance companies offering MoneyGram services in Jamaica will not be able to access the MoneyGram platform to send money overseas or to pay remittance proceeds to recipients in Jamaica.” The UK Post Office, which also offers MoneyGram services, said on its website that “at this time, MoneyGram services are not available online or in branches, including online support.”
MoneyGram has not yet said when it will resume service. In response to questions from X users, MoneyGram said, “We don't have a timeline and we are currently working on a fix.”