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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 February 3- February 9

Todd White
February 12, 2025
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February 3 – February 9 (Published February 12th)

PERSPECTIVES by Todd White

 

31 Crypto Private Financings Raised: $297.0M

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $171.9M

Rolling 52-Week Average: $205.9M

 

While many of us were forced to endure the “great purge” from our vantage in the US, trusting that political winds would eventually shift in favor of regulatory clarity over a combative approach to crypto and blockchain technologies in North America, some of the world’s most preeminent financial institutions were making forward-thinking moves to embrace the technology. Nomura’s launch of the Swiss-based Laser Digital trading and investing platform, and the co-founding of institutional digital custodian Komainu come to mind. As does Standard Chartered with their launch of Zodia Markets and Zodia Custody for institutional trading and custody, the co-founding of the Partior payments network along with JP Morgan and DBS, and numerous venture investments to help grow the ecosystem. There are several others as well, including the Japanese financial powerhouse SBI Group.

 

SBI has been one of the most active traditional financial institutions in the crypto and blockchain space, with significant investments, strategic partnerships, and presence across multiple segments—from exchanges to mining, institutional crypto services, and blockchain-based financial products. These include operating their own crypto exchange, SBI VC Trade, providing institutional custody through SBI Digital Asset Holdings, collaborating with Swiss Digital Exchange for institutional-grade crypto custody and trading infrastructure, and providing early financial support for market leaders such as Ripple, Securitize, and Oasis Pro Markets.

 

This week SBI expanded its position at the intersection of traditional finance and digital assets by leading a EUR 140M round and becoming the majority owner of Solaris, a German Banking-as-a-Service provider of regulatory-compliant banking infrastructure, including digital asset custody and payments services. The round was co-led by Boerse Stuttgart Group and represents a strategic move that will expand SBI Group’s footprint in Europe and strengthen their ability to offer regulated digital asset services, embedded finance, and institutional crypto solutions in the region.

 

While not without risk—including the complexity of integrating Solaris’s capabilities with SBI’s existing ventures while navigating the evolving European regulatory landscape—this move aligns with SBI’s broader vision of bridging traditional and digital finance and could leave them well positioned for the emergence of regulated crypto banking in the EU and beyond.

 

It should be a very interesting landscape indeed. In a recent interview at Davos, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, who has been cautious to date, predicted that the US banking system will “come in hard on the transactions side” if regulatory clarity becomes real, insisting that BoA has “hundreds” of blockchain patents already, and a strategy to enter the field. If and when that comes to pass, he and his US peers may find that many global institutions are well out in front.

 

Contact ryan@architectpartners.com to schedule a meeting.