Lamia, your background involves managing both product launches and growth metrics across the full customer lifecycle. How does that perspective influence the way you approach marketing at MoneyGram?

My background is in building growth engines at startups, and that mindset translates really well to the transformation at MoneyGram. Our goal isn’t just growth. It’s profitable growth.

We run our marketing program with a very clear LTV/CAC North Star. That keeps us honest and focused. We’re growing our customer base every month, but we’re also making every marketing dollar work harder over time.

That means being disciplined about where we invest across the funnel, constantly looking for acquisition efficiencies, and putting just as much energy into retention as we do into acquisition. 

We’ve built a replicable, scalable playbook that compounds. That’s what I would have done during a startup-to-scaleup transition as well.

Moving money across borders sounds simple on the surface, but the reality is often far more complex. What are some of the underlying challenges businesses still face when it comes to international payments?

People remember the moment when the money arrives (and how fast). They don’t see everything that has to happen to make that moment possible.

Behind every transfer, there are a lot of moving parts: partners, compliance, treasury, technology infrastructure, customer support. All of that must work in sync across different countries, partners, and regulations. But we have done this for years at MoneyGram, which gives us a structural advantage for innovation.

From a marketing perspective, the complexity shows up in a different way. Every remittance corridor is its own world. Different languages, different cultures, different financial behaviors.

That’s where localization really matters. You can’t run cross-border marketing with a single global message. The best campaigns speak the language of the community, reflect local culture, and show up where people consume content. When you get that right, you’re not just advertising a product. You’re building real connections.

Transparency in fees and exchange rates has long been a concern in cross-border payments. How important is pricing clarity in building trust with your customers?

It’s critical. And the impact is immediate.

We’ve run plenty of experiments where simply improving how pricing is displayed led to higher conversion. Same product, same price. Just clearer.

Customers today are incredibly savvy. They have multiple apps and tools to compare rates instantly. So if pricing isn’t clear, they’ll move on.

Transparency removes friction. When someone can instantly see the fee, the exchange rate, and what the recipient will actually receive, the decision becomes easy. In financial services, clarity is one of the fastest ways to build trust.

As payments infrastructure becomes increasingly digital, how do you position the platform not just as a service but as an enabler of global commerce?

One of the most exciting shifts is how many financial tasks you can now handle from a single app.

For example, our customers can now pay bills in other countries directly through the MoneyGram app. If they have a utility account number, they can enter it once, check the balance, and pay the bill.

A few years ago, that kind of cross-border convenience simply didn’t exist.

Our focus is to keep removing friction. The easier it becomes to manage financial obligations across borders, the more people can participate in the global economy without needing to think about the complexity underneath.

In the payments category, where differentiation can be difficult to communicate, how do you clearly convey value without overwhelming audiences with technical detail?

Customers are very clear about what they care about.

They want to trust the company handling their money. They want fair pricing. And they want speed. We’ve asked thousands of customers, and the answer is always the same.

MoneyGram has a strong foundation there. We’ve been around for more than 85 years, we have global recognition, we’ve served over 50 million customers, and our app has a 4.9 rating in the App Store.

So our job in marketing isn’t to invent some complicated new narrative. It’s to consistently reinforce the things customers already value, while constantly testing better ways to communicate them.

You’ve managed large P&Ls and growth metrics throughout your career. How do you ensure marketing investments stay closely tied to measurable business outcomes?

There is only one way: the right team with the right mindset. Everyone on my team knows that marketing is responsible for business outcomes, not just activity. We don’t spend money, we invest.

I’m a big believer in simple guardrails. We track a lot of metrics, but we manage the business around a few clear ones: new customer growth and marketing efficiency.

When those two are trending in the right direction, you know the engine is working.

As companies expand across borders, expectations around speed, transparency, and accessibility in payments are changing rapidly. How do you see MoneyGram evolving to meet those demands?

In some ways, the expectations haven’t changed at all.

I worked in remittances more than a decade ago, and even then, customers wanted the same two things they want today: transparent pricing and instant transfers.

What’s changed is that we’re getting closer to delivering that consistently.

A large share of our transactions today is already instant. And once customers experience instant transfers, their expectations shift immediately.

We’re also experimenting with new technologies that can expand those capabilities. For example, we recently announced a stablecoin pilot app in Colombia that we plan to expand further.

The key is optionality. Different customers prefer different ways to move money, and our job is to make all of those options fast, transparent, and reliable.

Finally, if you had to challenge one assumption that companies still hold about marketing in fintech, what would it be?

That fintech marketing has to sound like fintech.

Most customers don’t wake up thinking about payment infrastructure. They’re thinking about sending money for a gift, paying a school bill, or helping someone out. It’s personal.