M&A: On Tuesday, Polygon Labs, the development company behind the Polygon blockchain, announced the acquisition of two U.S.-based crypto companies, Coinme and Sequence, for a combined $250 million. The transactions are intended to position Polygon Labs as a regulated payments and stablecoin infrastructure provider, spanning wallets, on- and off-ramps, and compliance.
Why it matters: The acquisitions come amid a sustained increase in stablecoin usage on Polygon. Since early last year, payment volumes from services like Stripe and MoonPay have grown from roughly $40 million to around $240 million on the network. In December, more than 5 million Polygon wallets interacted with stablecoins, making it the third most active network for stablecoin usage behind BNB Chain (12.6 million) and Tron (11.2 million).
Strategic context: The growth coincides with a key leadership hire. Last September, the company appointed Stripe’s former Head of Crypto as Chief Product Officer, underscoring the strategic repositioning of Polygon as a go-to platform for stablecoin payments.
Open Money Stack: Central to Polygon’s strategy is its Open Money Stack, a bundled set of tools designed to support stablecoin-based products on Polygon. The stack aims to consolidate functions such as wallet creation, cross-chain transfers, payments, and fiat on- and off-ramps into a single API, reducing integration complexity for businesses and developers.
“If you think about how you do that today, you need to choose a chain, take these different components, figure out who you’re going to work with, figure out pricing, and stitch them together,” said Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs. “It’s actually really complicated.”
Key additions: With the Coinme and Sequence acquisitions, Polygon is aiming to strengthen the stack, adding major new building blocks to the offering.
What Coinme brings: Coinme adds regulated payments and wallet infrastructure, including money-transmitter licenses across 48 U.S. states. It also runs a 50,000+ retail network where users can convert cash into crypto via partners like Walmart and Coinstar, alongside an enterprise API for trading, custody, and fiat on- and off-ramps.
What Sequence brings: Sequence primarily expands Polygon’s wallet toolkit. The acquisition includes embedded wallets with enterprise-grade security, as well as a one-click cross-chain orchestration and intents engine that hides bridging, swaps, and gas from users and is already used across ecosystems like Arbitrum and Monad.
Use cases: In the near term, Polygon Labs expects the Open Money Stack to be adopted primarily by traditional businesses and fintechs for use cases such as cross-border payments, remittances, and stablecoin-based treasury and cash management.
Richard Astle is VP Head of Fireblocks Network, where he oversees the growth and strategic direction of one of the largest institutional digital asset networks globally.
Polygon’s push into licensed stablecoin payments is another sign of the crypto industry’s maturation. Protocols are increasingly realizing that their old playbook — build the infrastructure layer, spend heavily to boost activity, and outsource application development to third-party builders — won’t reliably drive adoption. You can’t just spend your way to product-market fit.
This is where vertical integration comes in. To bootstrap real usage, they’re now building the full enterprise-grade stablecoin payments stack, including the last-mile pieces and, most importantly, the licenses institutions actually need.
Kenny Chan is leading Business Development and Corporate Partnerships for the Stablecoin Ecosystem team at Coinbase.
To add on that: as general-purpose blockspace commoditizes, Polygon is rightfully moving beyond “just selling a chain” and up the stack into offering an integrated product.
And while everyone’s debating who the winners in stablecoin payments might be, I think it’s more interesting to see how traditional incumbents react once crypto-native players come for their lunch. Once margins start getting squeezed, the fastest way to defend their position is to buy capabilities rather than build them. That’s why I expect M&A activity to accelerate meaningfully this year.
