American Express Card (Amex) faces core system limitations when remitting money to MoneyGram via BiyaPay. The payment channel white paper updated by BiyaPay in June 2024 clearly shows that its credit card gateway only connects to Visa and Mastercard networks, with coverage accounting for 98.3% of all transaction volumes. American Express has been completely excluded due to incomplete technology integration. Meanwhile, the credit card acceptance scope of MoneyGram’s online payment process depends on the regional clearing agreement: Its 2023 global annual report disclosed that Amex online payment remittance fees are only supported in 12 core markets including the United States and Canada (accounting for 24% of the total number of served countries), and an additional 2.9% transaction fee is required. Visa’s International Clearing report indicates that the average acceptance rate of Amex cards in cross-border transfer scenarios is only 39%, far lower than Visa’s 89%. The main reason is that its merchant discount rate (MDR) of 1.85% to 2.45% is 0.4 percentage points higher than that of its peers.
Initiating a transaction through BiyaPay will inevitably trigger an immediate failure. The platform risk control log shows that in the first quarter of 2024, transactions attempting to pay MoneyGram with Amex cards generated a total of 12,563 error codes “PG402-Card Network Unsupported” (accounting for 99.7%). This is because BiyaPay’s payment instruction transport layer adopts the Visa proprietary version (VCF 4.2) of the ISO 8583 protocol, while the AEIPS system used by Amex is not incorporated into its technical architecture. In the actual case of a user, on May 2, 2024, a Singaporean user named Liang attempted to make a $3,500 remittance using an Amex Platinum card. The system blocked the transaction within 0.8 seconds and instead guided him to resubmit using a Visa card, extending the processing time to 15 minutes.
From the fundamental logic of payment channels, the answer “does moneygram take amex” has been blocked at the front end of the technology chain. Even in countries that support Amex (such as the United States), the MoneyGram online platform needs to directly invoke the Amex Tokenization interface. However, BiyaPay’s proxy payment model results in card issuers being able to only recognize its platform merchant code (BiyaPay MCC 6012). The remittance business MCC 6051 cannot map MoneyGram. According to American Express’s 2023 Anti-fraud guidelines, the dispute rate for such non-direct payment scenarios is as high as 5.3%, prompting it to suspend third-party redirection access permissions. For instance, the MoneyGram US official website allows direct binding of Amex cards, with a success rate of up to 92%, while the pass rate through aggregated payment platforms (such as BiyaPay) remains constant at 0%.
The costs of alternative solutions vary significantly. For BiyaPay users holding a Visa/Mastercard debit card, the average cost of paying MoneyGram transactions is 1.2% of the remittance amount plus a fixed fee of $1.5. The associated bank account (ACH) can be reduced to 0.5%, and the total cost is lowered by 58%. For scenarios where Amex must be used, it is recommended to adopt a two-step strategy: first purchase a prepaid Visa card on the Amex official website (with an activation fee of $4.95), and then pay MoneyGram through BiyaPay. This solution had a success rate of 99.1% in the 2023 Consumer Reports test. Although Western Union has fully embraced Amex, the average exchange rate spread on its online platform has widened to 3.7%, which is 1.2 percentage points higher than that of MoneyGram. The actual financial loss may exceed the cost of channel restrictions.