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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

Year-End 2023 Crypto M&A and Financing Report

Eric Risley
January 8, 2024
DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT

Download the full report above.

Crypto Mergers & Acquisitions

 

The 2022 hangover continued with announced transaction volume remaining muted, however, improving fundamentals over the past three months promise to reinvigorate M&A activity in 2024.

 

M&A activity in Q4 2023 was up modestly from the prior two quarters but remains 30% below the average pace of 2022.

 

Crypto is not alone, broader technology and financial services M&A have similarly suffered reduced activity levels as well.

 

Traditional financial services companies remained wary of crypto assets, driven by regulatory and compliance uncertainty and persistent legitimacy questions.  However, digital assets, crypto’s cousin are attracting considerable attention.

 

The Brokers & Exchanges subsector and supporting Investing & Trading Infrastructure subsector continue to dominate representing 39% and 31% of Q4 and full year 2023 activity, respectively.

 

Headline transactions of 2023 were Ripple | Metaco, Coinbase | One River, DTCC | Securrency and Deutsche Borse | FundsDLT.

Crypto Private Financings

 

Financing activity continued its softening trend, with both deal count and capital raised falling from 2022 levels, but a late bump in December may portend a shift in the winds.

 

Crypto financing activity has been in a persistent decline since Q1 2022. Overall 2023 deal count fell by 34% from 2022 with capital raised falling by 68%.  Similarly Q4 2023 posted 50% lower proceeds raised and 4% fewer deals compared to the same quarter last year. 

 

But a December uptick bucked the trend, driven by a slight resurgence in later state deals and deal size rose for Q4 across the board for seed, early and late stage deals.

 

Old Guard crypto survivors attracted the largest numbers, including eToro raising $250M as an alternative to its cancelled SPAC, and Swan Bitcoin with $165M across two rounds to support Bitcoin investing and potential lending services.  Interoperable infrastructure projects also attracted substantial support,  such as  Wormhole ($225M) and LayerZero ($120M), both focused on cross-chain communications.  And new products and/or FinTech solutions such as Doshi’s Asian NFT market ($140M), Worldcoin’s digital ID ($115M) and Taurus with $65M for enterprise grade infrastructure.  

Crypto Public Companies

 

Crypto stock prices had an outstanding year driven by positive changes in the crypto environment. 

 

The Architect Public Crypto Market Index© was up 247% over the year. In comparison, the NASDAQ 100 and S&P 500 rose 43% and 24%, respectively.

 

Gains were driven by positive market developments following the 2022 turbulence and subsequent sell-off. 

 

Public crypto company multiples leveled out at typical  NASDAQ technology growth company valuations.  The Index’s Enterprise Value/Revenue in December 2022 was 1.8x and rose to 6.1x in December 2023.  By comparison, the NASDAQ 100 Market Cap/Revenue was 4.8x in Dec. 2022, falling to 4.5x in December 2023. This multiple “reset” occurred despite 2023 index revenue growth of 11%; investors focusing instead on the improving environment.

 

At the sub-sector level, Crypto Investment Platforms returned an average of 165%, which was significantly lowered by Coinshares 1%.  Network Operators average return was 556%, lowered by Bitdeer and Canaan’s 15% and 19% respectively, and Crypto Influenced average return was 99%, primarily driven by MicroStrategy’s 336%.