Polygon Labs Makes $250M Power Play: Acquires Coinme & Sequence to Supercharge Open Money Stack

Polygon Labs just dropped a quarter-billion-dollar statement. The Ethereum scaling giant is snapping up crypto cash-out pioneer Coinme and wallet infrastructure leader Sequence—not just expanding, but building an entire financial operating system from the ground up.

Beyond Scaling: Assembling the Stack

This isn't a typical acquihire. Forget just buying talent or tech. Polygon's move is a strategic land grab across the financial stack. They're stitching together the pipes for digital cash—from on-ramps and wallets to the very rails that move value. The Open Money Stack isn't a buzzword; it's a blueprint to bypass traditional finance's creaky plumbing.

The $250M Bet on Real-World Utility

That eye-watering price tag buys instant, tangible utility. Coinme's network of thousands of physical kiosks bridges the gap between digital assets and the corner store. Sequence brings slick, embeddable wallet tech that makes crypto feel like any other app login. Together, they turn abstract blockchain potential into something you can actually spend.

Cutting Out the Middleman (and Their Fees)

Polygon's play directly targets the friction—and frankly, the rent-seeking—of legacy systems. Why wait three days for a settlement or pay a 3% card fee when value can move peer-to-peer in seconds for pennies? It's a direct challenge to the old guard's business model, built on being a necessary toll booth.

The Cynical Take from Finance

Sure, some Wall Street veterans will scoff. 'Another tech company playing banker,' they'll mutter between sips of overpriced coffee, blissfully ignoring that their own industry's 'innovation' lately is just finding new fees to charge. Meanwhile, the real rebuild is happening in the open.

Polygon isn't just building a better blockchain. They're assembling the pieces for an open, internet-native financial system—and they just spent a quarter-billion to prove they're serious. The race isn't for the best tech alone anymore; it's for the entire stack.

Polygon Labs announced a $250 million acquisition 

Polygon Labs acquired two crypto startups, Coinme, which operates crypto ATMs and cash-to-crypto services, and Sequence, a blockchain infrastructure provider, for over $250 million. 

The company announced the acquisitions five days after it introduced its Open Money Stack system. The system is designed to unify liquidity, payment processing, and regulatory controls for global stablecoin transactions. 

Coinme was founded in 2014 as one of the first licensed digital currency exchanges in the United States. The company offers Polygon money-transmitter licenses and compliance infrastructure, allowing operations in 48 states, while Sequence contributes smart wallet technology and tools that simplify crypto payment flows across networks without requiring technical steps. 

Together with Polygon, the businesses have processed more than $1 billion in off-chain sales and over $2 trillion of on-chain value transfers. 

Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron and Polygon Foundation founder Sandeep Nailwal said the acquisitions are a way of positioning the company as a direct competitor to Stripe. Nailwal described the approach as a “reverse Stripe” strategy. 

How does Polygon stack up against Stripe?

Stripe has built its stablecoin infrastructure through a series of major acquisitions over the past years. In October 2024, Stripe announced a $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge, a startup focused on stablecoins, which closed in February 2025. In September 2025, Stripe launched Open Issuance, a platform powered by Bridge that enables any business to launch and manage their own stablecoin with just a few lines of code. 

Stripe also acquired the team behind the crypto payment app Valora in December 2025 and developed with Paradigm the Tempo blockchain for stablecoin payments. 

Meanwhile, Polygon already operates an established network of blockchains built on top of ethereum and is now adding companies to develop services on this existing foundation. The company finished 2025 with $3.3 billion in stablecoins on-chain. 

Boiron said Polygon’s near-term strategy WOULD be built on partnerships with payment networks like Visa and Mastercard. Visa launched USDC settlement in the United States in December 2025. Expansion in the U.S. is planned through 2026. 

As of November 30, Visa’s monthly stablecoin settlement volume passed a $3.5 billion annualized run rate. It also launched a pilot program allowing instant payouts in USD-backed stablecoins through its Visa Direct platform. The company has planned a rollout expected in the second half of 2026.

Mastercard unveiled end-to-end capabilities for stablecoin transactions in April 2025, competing directly with Visa. Visa predicts the stablecoin market could reach as much as $4 trillion by 2030.

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