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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

Snapshots

Week of September 11 – September 17

Michael S. Klena
September 20, 2023
DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT

33 Crypto Private Financings Raised ~$138M

33 Crypto Private Financings Raised ~$138M

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $144M

Rolling 52-Week Average: $201M

 

Segment Overview

Deal count is up this week, although capital invested is down on a relative basis.  There are about 10 raises that didn’t report amounts, but I suspect they are on the smaller size.  This is a marker for earlier deals & smaller sizes overall.  Large raises and later stage remain few and far between.

 

Selected Highlights 

Mocaverse raised $20MM via SAFE notes, led by CMCC Global with six other investors tagging along. Mocaverse is a project under Animoca Brands, the sprawling gaming and metaverse firm, and is building identity based tools for Web3. It will combine identity with a loyalty program opening its use to the wider Animoca universe.  It also has a DAO based structure.

 

Why Notable?  Animoca Brands is an very active investor, with over 450 investments in various firms. Notable for bringing in other investors to further this project and striving for a network effect.  

 

Fipto raised €15MM led by Serena.  Fipto is a French fintech focused on payments, specifically using blockchain based digital assets for payments.

 

Why Notable? We continue to highlight real world use cases of blockchain beyond trading, and we’re seeing more activity in the payments space.  Friend of Architect Partners, Orbital (getorbital.com), for example, has expanded their product a few years ago with digital asset payments, and has seen its use explode.  All for the simple reason that it’s cheaper & less friction to move assets/monies globally.

 

OrangeX raised $10MM led by Kryptos Research with four other investors chipping in.  OrangeX is a relatively new crypto exchange, launched in 2021.

 

Why Notable? OrangeX has specifically stated the funds will go towards regulation frameworks. Trust is paramount for exchanges, and embracing regulation is a key aspect.  While there is a slow march to regulatory clarity, particularly outside of the US, it is not well defined despite 10 years of activity.  As noted previously, an exchange attracting capital in this environment is a feat in itself.

 

Patterns  

Broken record, but the catch-all “Infrastructure” remains the main segment. Gaming has been bubbling up lately as a sector, and in all forms.

 

Conferences  

We will be at Mainnet (Sept. 20-23).  If you will be there, let’s schedule time to connect.