Polygon Makes $250 Million Investment in Stablecoin Payments
Polygon Labs announced a pair of acquisitions designed to boost its stablecoin payments business.
The company is due to acquire cryptocurrency exchange Coinme and crypto wallet infrastructure provider Sequence for more than $250 million, Polygon said in a Tuesday (Jan. 13) press release provided to PYMNTS.
The deal is designed to deliver three chief components of the Polygon Open Money Stack, “including physical cash and digital fiat on- and off-ramps, wallet infrastructure, and cross-chain orchestration through intents,” the company said in the release.
“Stablecoins are increasingly being used as a settlement layer for global payments, but the infrastructure around them remains fragmented,” Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron said in the release. “These acquisitions give us regulated access to U.S. payment rails, wallet infrastructure and cross-chain intents capabilities to build an open payments business on top of on-chain settlement.”
Founded in 2014 as one of the first licensed digital currency exchanges in the United States, Coinme offers Polygon money-transmitter licenses and compliance infrastructure that allow operations in 48 states. The company also offers a “regulated white-label crypto-as-a-service offering” for FinTechs, enterprises and payment applications, according to the release.
Sequence adds smart wallets and a “one-click, cross-chain orchestration and intents engine” aimed at simplifying crypto payment flows across networks, “without requiring users to manage bridging, swaps or gas,” the release said.
Along with Polygon, the businesses have processed more than $1 billion in off-chain sales and over $2 trillion of on-chain value transfers, per the release.
The acquisition comes as stablecoins are increasingly being pushed into the financial mainstream.
“The stablecoin pitch has always been a digital token that maintains a stable value, usually pegged to a fiat currency, while inheriting the speed, programmability and global reach of blockchains,” PYMNTS reported Friday (Jan. 9). “What that pitch can leave out, however, is everything that makes money usable at scale. That includes compliance, consumer protection, liquidity management, accounting standards and integration with existing payment rails.”
The gap is now closing, as evidenced by developments from the banking sector, the report said. Last week, Digital Asset and Kinexys by J.P. Morgan announced a collaboration bringing Kinexys products to Digital Asset’s Canton Network, a privacy-enabled blockchain network for synchronized financial markets. Also last week, Barclays announced it bought a stake in Ubyx, a U.S. stablecoin settlement company.
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