Best Defensive Companies To Buy For 2015

Best Defensive Companies To Buy For 2015: MoneyGram International Inc (MGI)

MoneyGram International, Inc. (MoneyGram) incorporated on December 18, 2003, is a global payment services company. The Company's products include global money transfers, bill payment solutions and financial paper products. MoneyGram conducts its business through its wholly owned subsidiary MoneyGram Payment Systems, Inc. (MPSI). The Company operates in two segments: Global Funds Transfer and Financial Paper Products. The Company's global money transfer and bill payment services are its primary revenue drivers. The Company offers its money transfer services on the Internet via its MoneyGram Online service in the United States, United Kingdom and through agent Websites in Italy, Saudi Arabia and Japan. It also offers money transfer services via mobile phone, kiosks, ATM, receive cards and direct-to-bank account products in various markets worldwide. Effective July 8, 2013, MoneyGram International Inc acquired Latino Services, an Atlanta-based provider of money transfer s ervices.

Global Funds Transfer

The Company's Global Funds Transfer segment provides money transfer and bill payment services to consumers, who are often unbanked or underbanked. Unbanked consumers are those consumers who do not have a traditional relationship with a financial institution. Other consumers who use its services are convenience users and emergency users who may have a checking account with a financial institution, but prefer to use the Company's services on the basis of convenience or to make emergency payments. MoneyGram offers services to consumers through third-party agents, including retail chains, independent retailers and financial institutions.

The Company provides Global Funds Transfer products and services utilizing a range of point-of-sale platforms. Its platforms include AgentConnect, which is! integrated into an agent's point-of-sale system, and DeltaWorks and Delta T3, which are separate software and stan d-alone device platforms. Through its FormFree service, cust! omers may contact its call center and a representative will collect transaction information over the telephone, entering it directly into its central data processing system.

The Company offers money transfers to consumers in a choice of local currency, United States dollars or euros, in certain countries. MoneyGram's bill payment services allow consumers to make urgent bill payments, pay routine bills, or load and reload prepaid debit cards. These industries include the credit card, mortgage, auto finance, telecommunications, corrections, satellite, property management, prepaid card and collections industries.

Financial Paper Products

The Company's Financial Paper Products segment provides money orders to consumers through its retail and financial institution agent locations in the United States and Puerto Rico, and provides official check services for financial institutions in the United States. It sells money orders under the Mo neyGram brand and on a private label or co-branded basis with certain of its retail and financial institution agents in the United States. During the year ended December 31, 2012, MoneyGram issued money orders through its network of 54,000 agent and financial institution locations in the United States and Puerto Rico. The Company generates revenue from its official check outsourcing services by charging per item and other fees, as well as from the investment of funds underlying outstanding official checks As of December 31, 2012, the Company also provided official check outsourcing services at approximately 7,300 branch locations of more than 1,200 financial institutions.

The Company competes with The Western Union Company.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Ben Levisohn]

  Western Union (WU) has gained 2.4% to $17.10 afte! r it beat! earnings forecasts and said its full year profit would come in at the top of its previously announced range. MoneyGram International (MGI), however, has plunged 12% to $11.14 after reporting a 22 cent profit, well below forecasts for 33 cents.

• [By WWW.DAILYFINANCE.COM]

  Prepaid cards that can be loaded with cash and used like debit cards are the new payment form of choice for scammers, replacing the classic method of asking victims to send money via a wire transfer service like Western Union (WU) or Moneygram (MGI). The most common vehicle is the Green Dot (GDOT) MoneyPak, which is available nearly everywhere and works just like a wire transfer. Once money is transferred via MoneyPak, it's gone without a trace. But if you've been victimized by a scam, "gone without a trace" is not what you want to hear. You want to hear: "Hi, this is Green Dot customer service. Of course we can help you get your money back." And that, according to the FBI, is just what a new crop of scam websites are doing: Pretending to provide customer service for MoneyPak, with phone numbers that actually lead to con artists aiming to re-scam the victims of earlier scams. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reports that it has received a large number of complaints about this new fraud technique. Typically, the victim is either someone trying to get a refund of what's on their card, or someone seeking help after they've been robbed in a scam involving a MoneyPak card, the FBI said. Seeking Refunds or Help, but Being Victimized Again In the refund version of the scam, the FBI said the crooks will ask for both the MoneyPak card number and either a credit card or checking account number, supposedly so a refund can be processed. Instead, the crooks now have all the information they need to use the victim's account to load the card, and then drain it. The victim variation targets those who have already had money stolen from them using a MoneyPak card. The phony customer service representative will exp! lain to t! he caller that to get the lost funds put back on the card, they'll have to first load the same amount of cash on the card again from their own account, because "reloading is the only way to process the refund." "In most complaints, victims are gi

• [By MONEYMORNING.COM]

  "Today, people speculate on the potential," Alex Hoffmann, executive vice president of global product management and emerging channels at MoneyGram International Inc. (NYSE: MGI), told Bloomberg News. "But today you do not have it."

• [By Jake L'Ecuyer]

  Equities Trading DOWN
  Shares of Moneygram International (NASDAQ: MGI) were 14.99 percent to $12.59. JMP Securities downgraded Moneygram from Market Outperform to Market Perform.

source from Top Stocks For 2015:http://www.topstocksblog.com/best-defensive-companies-to-buy-for-2015.html