Over $100B could be disrupted by onchain payments and stablecoins, Polygon Labs CEO says

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As the stablecoin market continues to grow, a number of market players, from major blockchains to startups, are doing everything they can to make the most of regulatory tailwinds and accelerate adoption. Polygon Labs, for one, is steadfast on being a key driver of the movement by narrowing down its focus to payments. 

“We realized that a general-purpose blockchain that is trying to do everything can't actually be great at everything,” Marc Boiron, Polygon Labs’ CEO, said on the Talking Tokens podcast. “So we went back and looked at data on Polygon — where we spent time, reputation — and realized Polygon has a really strong reputation in the payment space.”

Earlier this month, Boiron and Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal launched the Open Money Stack, an initiative that aims to help move money onchain and keep it there.

“We were already doing incredibly well 12 months ago in payments; blockchain was already built quite well for payments. So [we thought] why don't we double down over there, and start focusing on specific changes to blockchains that could improve payments even more?” he said.

Boiron believes Polygon’s next big opportunity is going to come through its “one API” model: an integrated stack of services that can move money and put it to work. Today, companies have to look at five to ten choices for everything they want to do, which usually results in them giving up or being directed down the wrong path, Borion noted. 

“The whole idea behind the Open Money Stack is you offer one API, you plug into that one API, and now you can move your money from an offramp from the real world to the blockchain world,” he explained.. 

That, Boiron believes, will let people move money around the world seamlessly.

The goal here is to abstract away the technical aspects of moving money so users and businesses don’t have to understand the technology — they can just use it.

“Then you’ll see the Stripes, Revoluts and those types of players saying, ‘OK, let’s actually use blockchains and allow our users to move money onchain because it’s a better user experience,” Boiron said. 

But it might take some time to completely hide the fact that payments are being routed through blockchains; the nascency of stablecoins means that companies that use them will want to clearly mention that they’re doing so. “There’s still a bit of learning [required] around abstracting away that user experience,” Boiron said.

That’s not to say that stablecoins haven’t taken off, they currently enjoy a market capitalization of more than $300 billion. Still, that’s far less than the trillions of untapped dollars that could be onchain. Historically, stablecoins have been seen as a safe haven to protect from crypto volatility, but in the past year, the payments sector has boomed, and tens of thousands of applications and startups are looking to make the most of this rush. 

Boiron feels that beyond the near term, we’ll come to a point where stablecoins become ubiquitous with the dollar and other currencies. 

That may explain why Polygon Labs this month acquired Coinme and Sequence for about $250 million to offer regulated stablecoin payments in the U.S. using Polygon’s blockchain. 

Coinme has money transfer licenses in 48 states as well as compliance infrastructure, while Sequence has SDKs that can connect apps on the backend. 

This means entities like banks, fintechs, merchants, and payout providers can use operating models like Polygon’s to offer stablecoin payments that settle near instantly.

The new initiative builds on Polygon’s strong momentum last year. Token Relations data shows that the network processed 220.6 million stablecoin transactions in December, moving $28.1 billion across USDC, USDT and DAI, led by payments apps like Avenia, Nexo, Paxos and Revolut. 

All in, Polygon Labs’ north star today is to move all money onchain. “When I look at the networks out there, there’s 100s of billions of dollars that’s going to end up being disrupted. So in 10 years, I want all the money to be onchain, and my hope is that the Open Money Stack is the reason that that ends up happening,” Boiron said.

Check out the next section for more details and the full episode.

For today’s episode, I interviewed Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs, about the company's expansion into payments through its new Open Money Stack and why connecting onchain systems to real world finance is critical for keeping capital onchain.

Marc explains why blockchains, stablecoins, and wallets are converging to make payments easier than traditional correspondent banking networks, and how Polygon's acquisitions of Coinme and Sequence can create a unified API for enterprises.

He walks through why general purpose blockchains can't excel at everything, how Polygon is doubling down on its payments reputation, and why the next inflection point happens when merchants, businesses, and developing countries adopt stablecoins at scale.

The conversation covers cross-border payments, FX markets, enterprise treasury strategies, the future of Visa and SWIFT, and why blockchain infrastructure will capture hundreds of billions in network value over the next decade.

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