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Coinme Acquired by Polygon Labs to Build its Open Money Stack
Coinme Acquired by Polygon Labs to Build its Open Money Stack

Transaction Overview
On January 13th, 2026, Polygon Labs announced it intends to acquire Coinme, a regulated crypto-as-a-service provider. Simultaneously, Polygon also announced the acquisition of Sequence, enabling payment flows across blockchain networks. Both acquisitions help build a fully integrated, rules-compliant stablecoin payments system – Poygon’s Open Money Stack.

Target: Coinme
Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Seattle, Coinme is a U.S.-regulated digital asset payments company offering crypto-as-a-service and stablecoin and crypto payment infrastructure for enterprises, fintechs, wallets, and payment applications.

Coinme is licensed and operates in 48 U.S. states, as well as Puerto Rico, and has built systems designed to handle fiat-to-crypto and stablecoin payments at scale while meeting U.S. regulatory requirements.

Coinme provides capabilities that partners integrate into their products. These capabilities, delivered as a set of APIs or SDKs, include KYC, payments by debit card, bank transfer, or cash, converting between fiat and crypto, trading, and custody, so partners can offer end-to-end crypto and stablecoin features embedded in their own applications.

Coinme also supports a large cash-to-crypto network through partnerships, providing the software and compliance layer that enables cash on-ramps and off-ramps at 50,000+ locations across the U.S.

Coinme serves more than one million users and has processed more than $1.3 billion in total transactions since it launched. Its enterprise customers include Coinstar, Exodus, Mercuryo, Baanx, and Breeze.

Coinme was co-founded by CEO Neil Bergquist and has raised $41M in equity funding from Pantera, Digital Currency Group, Coinstar, Circle, and MoneyGram.

Coinme competitors include: ZeroHash, MoonPay, Bridge | Stripe, Banxa | OSL, and Paxos.

Buyer: Polygon Labs
Polygon was founded in 2017 as Matic Network and is actively undergoing an evolution in its product offering. Polygon Labs, formed in 2023, is responsible for supporting the development of the Polygon ecosystem, with a focus on fast, low-cost blockchain infrastructure for payments.

Polygon is now building the Open Money Stack, an integrated set of services designed to move money instantly and reliably, globally. It combines blockchain settlement on the Polygon network with core payment components like wallets, stablecoin integrations, cross-chain connectivity, and compliance tooling, to keep funds on-chain so they can be used across on-chain financial applications.

To make this work across many different blockchains, Polygon Labs is building AggLayer, a settlement layer meant to help different blockchains connect and exchange value with each other quickly and at low cost, reducing the need for separate, disconnected systems.

Polygon is a listed token with a current fully diluted value of $1.6B. Polygonscan shows more than 6.2 billion total transactions on Polygon. Polygon’s website also points to scale indicators like billions of dollars of stablecoins on the network, millions of transactions per day on average, and monthly payment volume, and describes Polygon as infrastructure that can support “trillions” of value moving through it.

The company was co-founded by Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, Mihailo Bjelic, and Anurag Arjun, and is currently led by CEO Marc Boiron, who was appointed in 2023.

Historically, in 2021, Polygon acquired zero-knowledge cryptography companies Mir and Hermez for $400M and $250M, respectively, but these are no longer aligned with the company’s Open Money Stack vision.

Transaction Parameters
Polygon Labs is acquiring Coinme for an undisclosed amount. In combination with another acquisition, Sequence, simultaneously announced by Polygon today. The combined acquisition value is around $250M. This marks one of the first examples of a protocol acquiring an operating business. The Coinme transaction is expected to close in Q2 2026.

Architect Partners served as the exclusive financial advisor to Coinme.

Notable comparable transactions include OSL | Banxa for $62M (M&A Alert), Nuvei | Simplex for $250M (M&A Alert), Ripple | Rail for $200M (M&A Alert), Stripe | Bridge for $1.1B (M&A Alert), MoonPay | Iron for $100M (M&A Alert), and MoonPay | Helio for $175M (M&A Alert).

Strategic Rationale
Polygon is acquiring Coinme and Sequence to move from being a settlement rail to owning the full experience of how money comes on-chain, moves on-chain, and settles back into the real world. The combination of Coinme’s licensed payments offering with Sequence’s wallet and payments orchestration stack gives Polygon an end‑to‑end, regulated crypto payments platform that spans physical kiosks, embedded wallets, and cross‑chain routing.

On Day 1, Polygon can take this integrated “crypto‑as‑a‑service” solution to banks, PSPs, neobanks, and fintechs who want compliant, turnkey stablecoin and token payments without building their own licensing, infrastructure, or user experience.

Architect Partners’ Observations
This acquisition(s) underscores a broader inflection point in the blockchain protocol market: technological performance and scalability alone will not win. The integration of real-world rails and the ability to deliver end-to-end value for mainstream users are becoming table stakes. As the market matures, competitive advantage is shifting toward owning the commercialization layer, including regulated fiat access, compliance operations, distribution channels, partner integrations, and strong product integration.

Networks that rely entirely on third-party providers risk commoditization, margin leakage, inconsistent user experience, and strategic dependency, just as stablecoins and tokenized products begin to drive meaningful transaction volume and the corresponding revenue opportunities.
Polygon’s actions show they fully understand the importance of this approach.

Sources
Polygon Press Release
Architect Partner M&A Tracker
PitchBook

Crypto M&A Snapshot

Week of August 21 – August 27

Peter B. Stoneberg
August 27, 2023
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OANDA, a global foreign exchange (FX) and CFD broker, announced on August 22, 2023 that it has acquired a majority interest in Coinpass, a UK-based cryptocurrency exchange. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

 

Coinpass was founded in 2018 and is registered with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). It offers a variety of proprietary on-ramp and trading capabilities. The exchange is reported to have over 100,000 registered users and has processed over £1 billion in trading volume. OANDA said that the acquisition of Coinpass will allow it to expand its offering in the cryptocurrency market. The company currently offers CFD trading in four cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ether, and Litecoin. The acquisition of Coinpass is the latest in a series of moves by OANDA to expand its presence in the cryptocurrency market. In 2022, the company launched a cryptocurrency research team and a cryptocurrency trading academy. The acquisition of Coinpass is also a sign of the growing interest in cryptocurrencies by traditional financial institutions. OANDA is not the only FX broker that has made a move into the cryptocurrency market. In recent months, other FX brokers such as IG Group and Saxo Bank have also announced plans to offer cryptocurrency trading.

 

B2C2, a crypto liquidity provider, has acquired Woorton, a European market maker and over-the-counter (OTC) trading firm. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

 

The acquisition of Woorton will allow B2C2 to expand its presence in the European market and offer its institutional clients a wider range of services. B2C2 will also benefit from Woorton’s expertise in digital asset market making and OTC trading, as well as its PSAN (prestataires de services sur actifs numériques) License, regulated by the AMF (Autorité des Marchés Financiers), which allows B2C2 to operate inside the EU. The acquisition of Woorton is a significant step for B2C2 as it continues to expand its global reach. The European market is a key target for B2C2, and the acquisition of Woorton will help the company to better serve its institutional clients in this region. The acquisition is also a sign of the growing consolidation in the cryptocurrency industry and the importance of country licenses as regulation becomes more widespread and stringent.   Established companies are finding that it is faster and more certain to acquire a company with licenses than to go through the time and effort to acquire those licenses themselves. As the industry matures, we are likely to see more acquisitions of this kind as companies seek to expand their geographic reach and offerings.

 

BIGG Digital Assets Inc. (BIGG), a Canadian company that invests in products and companies that support crypto, has agreed to acquire TerraZero Technologies Inc. (TerraZero), a Metaverse development group and Web3 technology company.  

 

The acquisition will allow BIGG to expand its presence in the Web3 market. TerraZero has a track record of developing Web3 projects for Fortune 500 brands that include PwC, Miller Lite and Atlantic Records. Total consideration is 62 million shares of BIGG, valued at approximately $20M.  This represents a healthy revenue multiple as TerraZero has run-rate revenue of approximately $3M per year, and is showing 160% year over year growth.  The transaction is expected to close in September 2023 and is subject to 66⅔% of TerraZero shareholders voting in approval of the transaction.  TerraZero shareholders will own approximately 20% of the combined company when the transaction closes.