Polygon Labs finalizes Coinme purchase, folding in licensed U.S. payment rails
DeFi & Yields ·
The deal gives Polygon regulated money-transmission coverage, cash access points, and a sizable user base to anchor its onchain payments push.
Polygon Labs has closed its acquisition of Coinme, bringing a regulated payments operation into what it calls the Polygon Open Money Stack, according to a company blog post. The combined business now holds coverage in 48 U.S. states, built from 37 state money transmitter licenses plus 11 exemptions, and is registered with FinCEN as a money services business. Coinme separately brings more than 1 million app users and ties to roughly 50,000 retail locations where customers can deposit cash.
The acquisition is meant to connect pieces Polygon has built over time — wallets and account infrastructure, cross-chain payment routing, and continuous settlement — with a licensed front door for dollars entering the system through banks, cards, or cash. Rather than forcing payment companies to stitch together separate vendors for each leg of a transaction, Polygon is positioning the combined stack as a single integration point covering entry, onchain movement, and payout.
A separate account of the deal, corroborating the licensing structure, describes Polygon gaining 37 state money transfer licenses and 11 state regulatory exemptions through the purchase, matching the figures in Polygon's own announcement.
Several companies are already testing the setup. Tazapay, which handles cross-border payments for enterprises and fintechs across more than 30 countries, is using the on- and off-ramp and wallet tools to shorten the path between stablecoins and local currency, supplementing the local and SWIFT rails it already runs. Mesh, Toku, and Kira are also named as early adopters, covering use cases spanning account funding, global payroll, and dollar access, though the blog post's detail on their specific integrations was cut off before describing Mesh's setup in full.
What remains unclear is how quickly these early partners will scale usage through the newly regulated rails, and whether the licensing footprint across 48 states will expand further or convert into additional state-level approvals over exemptions. Coinme's disclosure that stablecoin-related services tied to Tazapay are handled through a Canada-registered entity, separate from its Singapore business, also signals that jurisdictional structuring across partners will remain a detail worth tracking as more companies adopt the stack.