Polygon Labs expects its regulated payments business to become profitable in 2027, CEO Marc Boiron told CoinDesk. The company completed its acquisition of Coinme on Wednesday. Coinme is a U.S.-regulated crypto payments provider. The deal gives Polygon Labs, which is based in the Cayman Islands, the ability to handle conversions between cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and traditional money with its own resources.
Coinme adds a regulated payments arm
The purchase is part of a broader business shift at Polygon Labs. In January, the company introduced the Open Money Stack, a product set for stablecoin payments and cross-border transfers. Now Polygon can provide the tech for moving money and collect fees for converting and transferring it. That revenue used to go to other businesses, Boiron said in a video interview.
Still small next to Visa and Stripe
The company is still far from serious competition with payments incumbents. Visa’s payments volume in fiscal 2025 topped $12.3 trillion. Stripe reached $1.9 trillion. Polygon is just starting. Boiron said he no longer thinks of Polygon as competing with blockchains. In his view, it is a payments-focused company that uses blockchains, mainly Polygon, to move money.
Control over customer relationships
The Coinme deal addresses a familiar problem for blockchain networks. They often supply the technology behind transactions but do not control the companies that generate them. With Coinme, Polygon can handle more of the payment process instead of sending customers to a third party when money enters or leaves a blockchain. Boiron said Polygon does not have that customer relationship today and does not decide what happens. He also claimed rival blockchains have offered financial incentives to payment companies to move transactions away from Polygon. With a regulated business in-house, he said, outside parties cannot force flows to move somewhere Polygon does not want. That control matters, perhaps more than the technology itself.
Fee revenue and token emissions
Polygon Labs earns revenue from its payments services. Transaction fees on the Polygon blockchain are separate. Priority fees go to validators and stakers. Boiron said transaction fees already offset token emissions. He estimated that millions of dollars in additional fees go to validators and token stakers. The 2027 profit target is still a forecast, and the payments market is difficult to enter. But the Coinme deal gives Polygon a direct role in handling money, not just the rails underneath it.
