The physical expiration period of MoneyGram drafts constitutes the primary limitation. Approximately 90% of paper money order (MTO) products worldwide have a validity period of 180 days (counting from the date of issue), and this industry standard is mandatory under Section 810 of the Uniform Monetary Services Act of the United States. MoneyGram’s 2023 annual risk control report disclosed that its system automatically marked unfulfilled bills of exchange for more than 180 days as “dormant”, with an average loss rate of 18.7% on the face value of each bill, mainly due to the pool turnover agreements that cross-border remittances must comply with. For example, the CAD 2,000 money order issued in November 2022 held by Canadian user Sarah Chen triggered the status lock directly after its maturity in May 2023. At this time, if an attempt is made to submit an exchange request through BiyaPay, a 100% automated rejection response will be received.
The electronic channel architecture of BiyaPay cannot penetrate the underlying protocols of financial institutions. The version of the MoneyGram API (v4.2) that its system interfaces with clearly stipulates that it only accepts requests for processing bills with the status code “ACTIVE” (covering 97% of its total bill recognition volume). When users upload expired bills through BiyaPay, The OCR optical recognition system will return the error message of code “MT410 – EXPIRED INSTRUMENT” within 0.3 seconds. Data for the first half of 2024 shows that approximately 5.2% of the MoneyGram transactions processed by BiyaPay failed due to bill expiration, corresponding to an average monthly loss of processing capacity of about 1 million US dollars. In contrast, the validity period of Western Union’s bills is set at 60 days, but its online platform allows an extension of 30 days, increasing the success rate of overdue processing to 33%.
Users need to directly appeal and activate through the official channels of MoneyGram. According to the MoneyGram support document QN-17673, users holding expired drafts can submit a revalidation application to the issuing agency within 24 months from the original expiration date (extended to 36 months in certain countries). The average processing time is 5 working days, and the activation fee is 10% of the face value of the draft or a minimum of $15. A typical case is that Filipino worker Ramon successfully activated a $3,000 bill that had been overdue for 11 months in 2023. After paying a $315 handling fee, he redeemed the funds through an offline agency outlet. During this process, BiyaPay can only provide the binding service of the fund receiving account and cannot interfere in the determination of the validity of the bills. The 2024 MoneyGram technical documentation confirmed that its API layer has not opened the interface for overwriting expired bills.
For extreme cases exceeding the 24-month limit, legal recourse becomes the last resort. Under U.S. Federal Regulation 31 CFR ยง 1010.340, financial institutions are required to transfer dormant funds to state financial management agencies. In 2023, MoneyGraph disclosed that it had transferred $22 million in unclaimed remittances to the California government, with an average redemption period of 4 to 8 months. If the issuer of the bill of exchange holds the original bill and identification, the state database (covering 92% of dormant funds) can be searched through the unclaimed.org platform, with a success rate of approximately 24.7%. At this point, even if funds are received through a bank account connected to BiyaPay, the legal claim process of the government department must be completed first – this fact clearly explains the practical constraints of the “do moneygram money orders expire” policy. The fundamental reason lies in the fact that financial institutions need to follow the regulations on the handling of long-term fund retention in anti-money laundering rules (FATF Recommendation 16).