Opinion of the Court
are still sold today for the same purpose: to safely transmit funds to an intended payee.[1] Many banks have outsourced the issuance and handling of these kinds of prepaid financial instruments to businesses such as MoneyGram.
The parties have identified four MoneyGram products as relevant to this litigation. MoneyGram calls these financial instruments “Retail Money Orders,” “Agent Check Money Orders,” “Agent Checks,” and “Teller’s Checks.” All of these instruments are products that MoneyGram creates and markets but that are sold to customers by another entity (either a retail location or bank) on behalf of MoneyGram.
As a general matter, these four MoneyGram products operate in the same manner. The purchaser prepays the face value of the instrument, plus any fee, and MoneyGram holds the proceeds (which have been sent to them by the seller entity) until the intended payee presents the instrument for payment. In addition, as a matter of business practice, MoneyGram keeps only limited records about transactions concerning these products. The seller entity transmits information to MoneyGram that identifies where the product was sold, among other things, but the seller does not include in the information given to MoneyGram the identity or address of the purchaser or payee (even if the seller collects that information).
The heart of the instant dispute relates to how MoneyGram handles the abandoned proceeds of these products. MoneyGram considers two of the four products—Retail Money Orders and Agent Check Money Orders—as falling within the scope of the FDA, so it gives the abandoned proceeds of those particular instruments to the States of purchase in accordance with §2503. But MoneyGram treats
- ↑ In addition to being a safe alternative to cash for transmitting money, money orders and similar prepaid instruments have an advantage over standard checks in that, because they are prepaid, they do not depend on the purchaser having sufficient funds in her bank account (in ordinary parlance, they cannot “bounce”).
