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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

Insights

Week of August 7 – August 13

Michael S. Klena
August 16, 2023
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20 Crypto Private Financings Raised ~$65M

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $174M

Rolling 52-Month Average: $231M

Segment Overview

August – like July just hotter & more humid (for us in the northern hemisphere).  August so far is as slow as expected with capital flows below average and smaller deal sizes.

 

Selected Highlights 

Moneygram took an investment from Stellar, hitting the tape just yesterday.  Following a commercial working relationship, Stellar’s Foundation head will join Moneygram’s board to help further the digital strategy.  Moneygram is the well known money transfer firm with online and physical locations.  Moneygram was taken private by Madison Dearborn Partners, the large PE firm, in June.  Terms of Stellar’s investment were not disclosed.

  

Why Notable?  Very rare to see a crypto native invest in a notable traditional firm.  The Stellar foundation has sizable assets and using them to cement partnerships is something, as an investment banking firm, we encourage. We may add additional commentary in next week’s snapshot.

 

Helio Protocol raised $10M from Binance Labs.  Helio combines its overcollateralized, decentralized stablecoin (HAY) borrowing and lending on Binance’s BNB chain, with multichain Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) and Liquid Staking Derivatives Finance (LSDfi). Quite a mouthful of lingo!  The protocol lives in the DeFi space and has nearly $300M in total value locked.  Last month, Helio Protocol also acquired Synclub to boost its staking infrastructure.  

 

Why Notable?  Binance Labs has been on a bit of an investing tear, investing in firms that can propagate its own assets such as the BNB chain. For DeFi, we’re seeing CeFi and TradeFi infrastructure migrate into the DeFi world with its own unique spin.  Managing risk in DeFi continues to be an area with significant room for growth.

 

Cube3 and Spearbit each raised for their seed round.  Cube3 is a Web3 security platform protecting smart contracts from malicious transactions and raised $8.9M with Blockchain Ventures leading.  Spearbit is a marketplace for security experts to advise on Web3 projects and raised $8.3MM with Framework Ventures leading.  

 

Why Notable?  Both are security for Web3, the often hyped concept. Security for this evolving technology is critical for it to mature and be given serious consideration for adoption.  Raising seed rounds of a decent size shows the continued interest in the segment.

 

Patterns  Web3 was a popular sector this week, with a fair number of firms focused on infrastructure stability, from security to data analytics.  These functions are signs of the maturation phase in the typical technology cycle.