Polygon Labs (POL) made a big statement on Tuesday when it announced plans to acquire crypto payments company Coinme and crypto infrastructure provider Sequence for $250 million. The goal? To become what Polygon Foundation founder Sandeep Nailwal described as "the biggest stablecoin money movement avenue in the world."

That's a bold ambition, but maybe not an unrealistic one. Stablecoins, those digital tokens pegged to fiat currency (usually the dollar), are quickly moving beyond their original role as crypto trading tools and into something that looks a lot more like actual payments infrastructure. After getting what looked like a blessing from the White House last year with the passage of the Genius Act, stablecoins are having a moment.

Steven Willinger, General Partner at Blockchain Builders Fund in Palo Alto, put it this way: This year is shaping up to be "the year stablecoins graduated from a crypto trading primitive to a payments primitive."

Everyone Wants to Launch a Stablecoin Now

Here's the thing, though: just because stablecoins are gaining legitimacy doesn't mean the world needs 50 new versions of essentially the same product. Yet that hasn't stopped everyone from trying their luck.

Since December 1, 2025, at least six distinct stablecoin projects have been announced or launched globally. JP Morgan launched JPM Coin in November. This is moving fast.

Let's look at who's jumped into the pool recently:

SoFiUSD launched on December 18, 2025, making SoFi Bank the first national bank to issue a fully reserved U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin on a public blockchain.

Pakistan's USD1 partnership was announced on January 14, 2026, when the Pakistani government signed a memorandum of understanding to integrate the USD1 stablecoin into its digital payment infrastructure.

EURXM, USDXM, and RONXM were formally announced on December 8, 2025, by a Romanian bank with plans to launch this summer. That's three stablecoins from one institution.

Wyoming's FRNT stablecoin began its public launch in early January 2026, following mainnet testing phases in August. Yes, a U.S. state now has its own stablecoin called Frontier.

Despite all these newcomers, the reality is that network effects in payments push value toward a small number of highly liquid, widely integrated settlement assets. Today, Tether (USDT) and U.S. Dollar Coin (USDC) issued by Circle Internet Group (CRCL) account for the vast majority of stablecoin market cap.

Do We Actually Need More Stablecoins?

"For broad, everyday payments, probably not," Willinger said. Merchants and payment service providers "will prefer the tokens with the deepest liquidity, clearest compliance posture, and easiest integration paths."

But there are scenarios where new stablecoins actually make sense. Product-specific tokens engineered for a protocol's own liquidity and incentive system, for instance, or stablecoins designed for particular yield structures.

Take Cap, a stablecoin protocol that positions itself with cUSD backed by a basket of regulated payment stablecoins and stcUSD as their yield-accruing variant. Or Unitas, which markets USDu as a decentralized, yield-bearing stablecoin.

New stablecoins also make sense when they come from highly liquid banks or payment systems like the privately held payments giant Stripe, Willinger noted. In May, Stripe introduced stablecoin-based accounts to clients in over 100 countries.

How Merchants Actually Use Stablecoins in Real Cash Flows

Willinger breaks down how merchants are starting to integrate stablecoins without completely overhauling their existing infrastructure:

"Accept stablecoins, settle in fiat" represents the simplest approach. Stripe's stablecoin payments flow lets customers pay with stablecoins while the merchant settles in dollars. The merchant never has to worry about holding crypto or dealing with volatility.

Abstract stablecoins behind the card networks is the more sophisticated play. Immersve, a principal member of Mastercard, markets non-custodial APIs and smart contracts that let partners create experiences where users spend digital cash anywhere Mastercard is accepted. They also offer stablecoin "issuing as a service."

Visa (V) is working to integrate stablecoins into existing payment systems, according to a January 14 Reuters report.

The hype is real, but let's be honest: mainstream merchant acceptance is still limited. There are more than $270 billion worth of stablecoins in circulation now, more than twice the $120 billion from 2023, according to Reuters citing data from blockchain indexers Allium Labs. But having $270 billion in circulation and having millions of merchants actually accepting them are two very different things.

What New Regulations Mean for Stablecoin Yields

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) recently released a new draft of what he described as a "negotiated market structure bill" for stablecoins. The bill text states that digital asset service providers be prohibited from paying any form of interest or yield for holders, with exceptions given for activity-based rewards and staking, providing liquidity, or posting collateral.

If this passes, it could make it harder for investors in yield-bearing coins like Solana (SOL) to easily unstake. They might have to hold onto their positions similar to holders of bank CDs.

This is where traditional finance is seeking to differentiate from fintech before they get steamrolled by digital assets, including yield-bearing stablecoins.

Where the Smart Money Is Going

Here's an important point: stablecoins themselves are not money makers for retail investors. Retail investors use them to hold digital cash in their trading accounts before cashing out for fiat or exchanging for another cryptocurrency.

For venture capital, the investment opportunities tend to be in startups focused on distribution, compliance, and workflow integration. The Blockchain Builders Fund, for example, invests in Immersve, Levl, Efexpay, and Moni.

"I think the real investment opportunity is in infrastructure, distribution, and regulated local variants," said Przemek Kowalczyk, CEO and Co-Founder of Ramp Network, a regulated payments infrastructure provider.

"The true value of a stablecoin is how they're used: payments, treasury management, merchant settlement, cross-border flows, and increasingly, everyday financial products," Kowalczyk said. "For merchants, I think the appeal is straightforward. Stablecoins can reduce foreign exchange costs, enable faster settlement, and open access to global customers without relying entirely on legacy banking. Once stablecoins integrate more deeply into payment stacks, they'll start to feel less like 'crypto' and more like a better version of digital cash."

This is exactly what Polygon is banking on with its $250 million acquisition.

Michael Treacy, Director of Marketing and Business Development at OpenPayd, summed it up nicely: "For merchants, the demand isn't for stablecoins themselves, but for what they unlock. They don't want to think about tokens or blockchains. They want money to move better. We are entering a new phase of payments, where infrastructure providers that can bridge stablecoins and fiat seamlessly will define the next generation of payment companies."

The Global Opportunity

The industry sees stablecoins as the real digital dollar. This is especially true in countries where the local currency is highly undervalued versus the dollar. Some experts predict that 30% of international payments in emerging markets could shift to stablecoins.

Bullish sentiment stems from regulatory clarity from Europe and the U.S., which is boosting adoption across the board.

Jean Rausis, Co-founder of Everything (formerly SMARDEX), predicts that Tether will remain dominant in volume and liquidity, citing the TRON Network's $7 trillion in Tether movement last year. But he thinks USDC will excel in traditional finance circles.

Competition will likely erode USDT's market share this year as rivals like PayPal Holdings (PYPL) with PYUSD and World Liberty Financial's USD1 stablecoin move in. Merchants will integrate via Visa, PayPal, Stripe, and Cash App for real-world flows, Rausis said, pointing to the Rumble (RUM) and Tether partnership that allows tips to be sent to Rumble show hosts while bypassing banks entirely.

"Two stablecoins are truly dominant, but the market isn't saturated. Do we need more? Yes," said Rausis. "For niche needs like DeFi yields, up to 20% in some protocols, or for chain-specific liquidity, and real-world asset tokenization, you need more."

"Competition matters," said Kowalczyk from Ramp Network. "There's going to be different use cases, jurisdictions, and user needs benefit from choice, whether that's dollar-based stablecoins, euro stablecoins, or local and regulated alternatives. We don't rely on a single bank or a single payment network globally. Digital money won't be any different," he predicted.

What to Watch in 2026

Meanwhile, 2026 will still see USDT and USDC as the main stablecoins in use, but risk venture investors are putting their money into companies that are seeing merchant acceptance. Risk capital will flow to companies that can "turn stablecoins into something businesses can use to run payroll, Treasury and merchant settlement on," Willinger said.

Polygon's quarter-billion-dollar bet is that the infrastructure layer—the pipes that move stablecoin payments around—will be more valuable than issuing stablecoins themselves. Given how crowded the stablecoin issuance space is getting, that might be the smarter play.

The real test will be whether companies like Polygon can actually deliver on the promise of making digital dollars move as easily as an email, without merchants or consumers needing to understand what's happening under the hood. If they can, we might look back at 2026 as the year stablecoins stopped being a crypto curiosity and started being boring old infrastructure. And in payments, boring is usually a sign that something's working.

The writer is an investor in Solana.