Polygon Labs is in advanced talks to raise up to $100 million in funding for a business dedicated to stablecoin payments, according to a report by The Information. This development comes at the same time as the network is making serious progress on its payment features, the latest of which is the third mainnet upgrade in four months.
For most of the past two years, Polygon’s network economy has had one main catalyst: Polymarket.
Polymarket accounted for more than half of the transactions on Polygon and 67% of its gas fees in March 2026, making it the largest platform ever to operate on the L2 network. However, a divorce between Polygon and Polymarket became imminent after Polymarket suffered a downtime in December 2025 following a Polygon network outage.
Shortly after the accident, a Polymarket team member came over certain That the company was building its own Ethereum Layer 2 network, which is referred to internally as POLY.
For a platform that has grown into one of the most liquid prediction markets in the world, relying on a general-purpose chain that it cannot control has become a liability.
Polymarket Announce On April 6, it rolled out what it called the biggest infrastructure change yet: a rebuilt trading engine, updated smart contracts, and the launch of Polymarket USD, a new USDC-backed security token from Circle, replacing the USDC.e bridge it had long relied on.
So, Polymarket’s L2 launch depends not on if it will happen or not, but when.
What was Polygon before Polymarket exit?
In January, Polygon signed definitive agreements to acquire Coinme, one of the first licensed cryptocurrency exchanges in the US, and Sequence, a smart wallet and cross-chain infrastructure provider, in a joint deal valued at more than $250 million.
Together, the acquisitions form the backbone of what Polygon calls the Open Money Stack, a vertically integrated platform designed to move stablecoins from fiat bank accounts to on-chain settlement via a single API.
Coinme offers regulated fiat currencies in and outside the US that operate across 48 US states under money transfer licenses, along with over 1 million existing users.
Sequence adds enterprise smart wallets and a one-click cross-chain orchestration engine. Co-founder Sandeep Nailwal described the combined strategy as a “reverse bar,” referring to the payments giant’s push into stablecoin infrastructure.
Founder of Polygon Foundation Sandeep Nailwal reportedly said“Polygon Labs becomes a full-fledged fintech company.”
Fresh An increase of $100 millionif completed, will add more weight to this bet.
the Giuliano solid forkwhich went live on the Polygon mainnet at block 85,268,500 today, Wednesday, April 8, is the technical complement to that trading strategy.
Can Polygon win as anyone else’s payments tier?
The trading landscape gives Polygon reason to be confident and cautious. The on-chain stablecoin supply is currently in place $3.4 billionWhich suggests that demand for its settlement bars remains high even as its most prominent app prepares to exit. Shift4 Payments, Revolut, Mastercard, Stripe and Flutterwave are among the companies currently using the network.
The US GENIUS Act of 2025 has given regulated infrastructure providers like Polygon a clearer path to market. Coinme’s money transfer licenses and compliance infrastructure have become a strategic asset rather than a regulatory footnote.
However, competitive pressure is real and continues to increase. Stripe and Paradigm have built Tempo, a layer-one blockchain focused on native settled payments, signaling their intent to own the full stack from settlement to custody.
The pace of acquisitions, protocol upgrades and fundraising activity initiated by Polygon suggests that the organization is deciding with some urgency that its future lies in being the payments chain for everyone rather than the main chain for one person, in this case, Polymarket.
