El Salvador recently made headlines by becoming the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, marking the start of an experiment amidst a global surge in cryptocurrency interest. The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, believes this move would cause the amount of money that low-income families living in the country receive from remittances to “increase in the equivalent of billions of dollars every year.”

MoneyGram International Inc (NASDAQ: MGI) recently announced better-than-expected second-quarter financial results. MoneyGram CEO Alexander Holmes appeared on Benzinga's YouTube show "Power Hour" for an exclusive interview Monday.

The pandemic’s acceleration of all things digital could not be more clear to MoneyGram CEO Alex Holmes. Driving the news: Holmes oversees a global money transfer business that operates in 200 countries.

For nearly 30 countries or territories, inward-flowing remittances—noncommercial money transfers that typically go to family and friends in another country—make up more than 10% of the annual GDP. For Lebanon, Somalia, and Tonga, it was over 30% in 2020.

When El Salvador voted this week to make bitcoin legal tender, it marked the start of an experiment sure to draw close attention amid a global surge in interest in cryptocurrency. Nayib Bukele, the Latin American nation’s meme-loving millennial leader, claims that embracing the cryptocurrency “will generate jobs and help provide financial inclusion to thousands outside the formal economy.”

Salvador may be touting bitcoin’s use to help its citizens living abroad send funds back home, but the biggest remittance firms are cautious about offering cryptocurrency services. In a move that could be a harbinger of crypto becoming a more popular way to send money across borders, El Salvador on Wednesday became the first country to adopt bitcoin as a parallel legal tender.