Polygon Labs expects its regulated payments arm to become profitable in 2027, following the completion of its acquisition of Coinme—a move into a market largely dominated by Visa and Stripe.
Key takeaways:
Polygon Labs aims to make its regulated payments business profitable in 2027.
Coinme brings 37 money transmitter licenses and 11 exemptions covering 48 U.S. states.
Four early customers have signed up, but the unified platform is still in technical preview.
Polygon’s acquisition of Coinme
The company finalized the acquisition on Wednesday. CEO Marc Boiron explained in a video interview that Coinme, a U.S.-regulated crypto payments provider, now allows the Cayman Islands-based group to handle conversions between cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and fiat currency itself, and to charge fees on the associated transfers. Until now, those revenues went to other players.
Coinme holds 37 money transmitter licenses across U.S. states and 11 exemptions covering a total of 48 states, and the company is registered with FinCEN as a money services business. When the deal was first announced, Coinme claimed to have more than one million users and a distribution network of around 50,000 retail locations.
Early customers include cross-border payments specialist Tazapay, payroll platform Toku, crypto payments network Mesh, and infrastructure provider Kira. However, the unified integration is still in technical preview and is not yet available to all customers.
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Marc Boiron’s strategy
Boiron says he stopped viewing Polygon as a competitor to other blockchains some time ago, preferring to describe it as a payments company “that simply uses blockchains to move money.” He also claims that rival chains have offered incentives to some payment providers to persuade them to leave Polygon.
In his view, directly owning the licensed entity puts an end to this dependence. Polygon now retains the customer relationship instead of routinely directing users to a third party whenever they deposit or withdraw funds from a blockchain. Transaction fees charged on the network itself remain separate, and Boiron says they already offset emissions of the Polygon Ecosystem Token (POL).
Polygon versus Visa
Payment fees increase with the amount transferred, unlike blockchain fees, which can sometimes amount to fractions of a cent. Polygon still has a long way to go: Visa processed more than $12.3 trillion in payments in fiscal year 2025, while Stripe processed $1.9 trillion.
The Coinme acquisition caps a year of major restructuring at Polygon Labs. In January, the company unveiled its Open Money Stack for stablecoin payments and agreed to acquire Coinme and wallet infrastructure provider Sequence for a combined total of more than $250 million. Boiron later announced a second round of job cuts for 2026, on July 16, explaining that the merger was expected to help Polygon Labs become profitable in 2027.
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