Polygon Labs Bolsters Stablecoin Payments Push, Acquiring Coinme and Sequence

Polygon Labs signaled connected Tuesday that it’s becoming a regulated payments institution by acquiring Coinme, a payments platform, and Sequence, an infrastructure firm, for a combined $250 million.

Polygon Labs, which established an Ethereum scaling network years ago, said successful a property merchandise shared with Decrypt that the acquisitions volition assistance powerfulness its caller toolkit, which seeks to simplify the process of maintaining and moving integer assets for assorted firms.

In an interrogation with Decrypt, Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron said the institution is determined to supply businesses with a broad solution for an system that volition progressively revolve astir stablecoins and tokenized securities successful the years to come.

“We’re buying 2 crypto companies, but it’s truly much astir gathering regulated middleware,” helium said. “We springiness 1 API, you plug it in, and present you person a blockchain that you tin on-ramp and off-ramp to, with wallets, and you tin person funds from immoderate different chain.”

Coinme, founded successful 2014, is registered arsenic a wealth services concern with the U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, oregon FinCEN. The institution powers much than 6,000 of Coinstar’s kiosks, which fto customers speech currency for integer assets.

Boiron said Polygon was particularly funny successful Coinme’s “physical currency to crypto on-ramp,” which allows radical to acquisition crypto utilizing currency astatine 50,000 locations crossed the U.S., done interactions with cashiers astatine convenience stores and retailers similar Walmart.

“We presumption this arsenic a Trojan horse,” Boiron added, arguing the work serves arsenic 1 of the easiest ways to onboard idiosyncratic to crypto. “You tin spell to a market store, person the barcode scanned by a cashier, springiness them cash, and past you person the crypto.”

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In the property release, Polygon highlighted Sequence arsenic a developer of “enterprise astute wallets,” arsenic good arsenic exertion for routing payments crossed antithetic blockchains. In November, the company, antecedently Horizon Blockchain Games, unveiled a “transaction coordination platform” designed to tackle interoperability issues successful crypto.

After raising $450 cardinal successful a 2022 backing circular led by Sequoia Capital India, Boiron said Polygon Labs’ acquisitions correspond different large shift: generating revenue.

Historically, the institution has been focused connected driving “value” to Polygon’s autochthonal token POL (formerly MATIC), which is utilized to wage for transactions fees, Boiron said. The token tin besides beryllium staked to gain rewards successful the signifier of further POL tokens.