The Post Office’s announcement to postmasters that MoneyGram services to Post Office would be ending has been met with shock and disappointment by the money transfer company.
A note issued by Post Office on Monday (30th September) warned postmasters that its contract with MoneyGram would expire at midnight.
MoneyGram services went offline globally following a serious cyber-attack that hit the firm on 20th September 2024. Post Office said that it had been in contract negotiations with MoneyGram since June of this year and had expected to agree a new contract to roll-on from 1st October 2024.
“The contracting process was in the final stages when, unfortunately, MoneyGram suffered the cyber-attack,” stated the note. “With MoneyGram services and communication channels severely disrupted over the last 10 days, Post Office offered to extend the current contract for a shorter period to enable us both to continue to prioritise the service renewal activity in the coming days.” Post Office claimed that this short extension would have also enabled it to understand any longer-term impact of MoneyGram’s cyber incident for its customers, postmasters, and partners.
The note claimed: “Unfortunately, MoneyGram has not accepted our offer, and therefore our contract with them will end today. We apologise for the short notice period on this.”
Post Office added: “We are still committed to finding a way to try to continue our partnership and dialogue continues with MoneyGram.”
The Post Office stated that approximately 6,000 Post Office branches had offered MoneyGram services and 4,000 Post Office branches that offer Western Union services. “Postmasters who previously supported both MoneyGram and Western Union, are encouraged to offer customers wishing to transfer money abroad to use Western Union at this time,” Post Office advised. “We recognise that not all 6,000 Post Office branches that offered MoneyGram also have Western Union – but the vast majority had both.”
MoneyGram then issued a message to postmasters, claiming to be “shocked and disappointed” by the Post Office’s message, accusing it of being misleading and a breach of the current agreement’s confidentiality.
MoneyGram said that it believed it had a binding agreement on a new 12-month extension with the Post Office. “However, the Post Office leveraged our unforeseen cyber incident to materially alter the duration and terms of the agreement in a way that was detrimental to MoneyGram,” said the money transfer firm.
It claimed that its cybersecurity experts had determined that the incident had had no effect on any of its agents’ systems and that it had resumed operations in every country outside of the UK.
“It is unfortunate the Post Office has taken this stand after our trusting partnership of over 25 years. We sincerely hope that we further the dialogue with the Post Office and can continue to work with you in the future,” MoneyGram told postmasters.
