JD Durkin: Is the CEO of Polygon. Marc, nice to see you here today. So of course, Polygon is well known as a blockchain. But with this Coinme deal done, it kind of changes your status a bit. You’re now a regulated US payments business. What does this say about the way that Polygon’s business continues to evolve?
Marc Boiron: Yeah, JD, thanks for having me. Yes, it’s a really big evolution for us, moving from a blockchain company to a fully regulated payments company. And when we think of what the next 10 to 15 years in payments is going to look like, it’s going to be moving money from what currently exists in the off-chain world to the on-chain world. And there’s no better way to do that than to control the rails that actually enable that in the biggest market in the world.
And so this acquisition of Coinme allows us to start making it very efficient to move that money from, you know, bank accounts, cash that you physically hold, onto blockchain rails, including Polygon as a chain, and then moving that globally anywhere you want in a more transparent, cheaper, and programmatic way.
JD Durkin: Yeah, Marc, we know that a stablecoin really moves in a matter of seconds, but still, getting it from a bank to the person who most needs it can kind of be a needlessly messy process for the end user. That’s where your Open Money Stack comes in. What is it? How does it work?
Marc Boiron: Yeah. The Open Money Stack is a fully vertically integrated solution that allows moving money from the off-chain world to the on-chain world, and the on-chain world to the off-chain world. And so with one API integration, you have the ability to start converting your dollars into stablecoins, holding those stablecoins on a blockchain, putting them in a wallet that earns yield for you, moving those funds to any other person on a blockchain, but also on any other blockchain. Interoperability is a key part of it.
And then if you need to use it in the real world, somewhere where stablecoins aren’t supported or another crypto asset isn’t supported, you have the ability to move it off-chain. And that single API is really what gives businesses the ability to go live in weeks with a solution that historically has taken months to go live with.
JD Durkin: And you’ve got a lot of businesses out there that are actively adopting what we’re talking about. [Unclear: “toss up”], Mesh, Toku, Kira, among others, all adopting it. What do they see in your business?
Marc Boiron: Yeah. So for them, it’s all about the ease of integration and access that they don’t otherwise have, right? You think of a payroll provider being able to give all of their businesses the ability to send funds globally in seconds in a programmatic way. This solves a lot of pain points that come with the pre-funding, for example, that companies need to do, and similar issues that exist in cross-border money movement in general. You basically have an issue of needing to move money in seconds, when usually it takes days.
And, you know, somebody like WhatsApp, who’s got a very strong Asian network, being able to offer the US ramps to them enables them to grow their business with a much easier integration than if they were to need to go to multiple different providers for different use cases.
JD Durkin: Marc, unfortunately, I’m out of time, but I always know it’s a good interview when I have more questions I didn’t get to, which means you have to come back. Marc Boiron, pardon me, CEO of Polygon. Marc, grateful for your time. Thanks for joining us today.
