Polygon Labs Marc Boiron: Stablecoins Will Reshape Payment Efficiency
Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron stated that stablecoins will free up working capital tied up in pre-funded accounts, settlement delays, bank operating hours, and idle balances, allowing businesses and consumers to have more disposable funds for transactions, inventory, payroll, and cross-border commerce.
He believes that the traditional banking system relies on inefficient links to generate revenue, while stablecoins reduce the time funds are in transit and settlement friction, minimizing waste in the payment process; when the same dollar can circulate faster, the actual payment frequency and business activity in the economy will be amplified.
His core judgment is that capital efficiency depends not only on interest rates or credit scale but also on whether funds are locked in pre-funded accounts and interbank settlement processes. If businesses can instantly access and use settlement funds, the occupation of working capital will decrease, and the cycles for procurement, inventory replenishment, and payroll will shorten.
Cross-border payments are the most direct application of this logic. Traditional cross-border remittances usually involve a network of correspondent banks, different operating time zones, compliance checks, and multi-layered account arrangements; if stablecoins can achieve real-time transfers between compliant entry and exit points, it can reduce waiting and freezing of funds in intermediate links.
Boiron defines the key to future payment competition as "millisecond-level payments." This means that the competition among payment service providers is no longer just about rates, but whether they can allow businesses to simultaneously complete fund confirmation, settlement, and available balance updates at the time of transaction.
In market mechanisms, corporate treasury departments, cross-border traders, platform companies, and payment institutions will become buyers of instant settlement demand; traditional banks that rely on account deposits, settlement cycles, and cross-border agency fees will face pressure on their revenue streams. Beneficiaries may be platforms that can provide stablecoin liquidity, compliant exchanges, real-time clearing, and enterprise-level payment interfaces, with funds shifting from low-yield idle balances to instantly deployable on-chain settlement assets.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Polygon Labs' past strategy has not solely focused on public chain expansion. It has successively promoted product lines such as Polygon PoS, zkEVM, and CDK, attempting to package transaction execution, application deployment, and cross-chain interoperability of the Ethereum ecosystem as infrastructure capabilities. Polygon has also collaborated with companies like Starbucks, Reddit, and Stripe, which are oriented towards consumer and payment scenarios, making its judgment on stablecoin payments more aligned with the commercial demands of an infrastructure provider: the higher the transaction frequency, the more the value of the settlement network and development tools can be amplified.
The key to the capital path is not whether stablecoins themselves generate interest, but who controls the fiat entry on the enterprise side, stablecoin liquidity, on-chain wallets, payment interfaces, and final redemption. Circle connects issuance, reserve assets, and developer interfaces through USDC; Stripe enters stablecoin payments through acquiring and merchant networks; PayPal combines payment accounts with stablecoins through PYUSD. Polygon aims to undertake the low-cost execution and expansion layer of these capital flows on-chain, rather than simply competing for stablecoin issuance revenue.
This is similar to the early path of internet payments where PayPal, Adyen, and Stripe replaced parts of the bank's acquiring and clearing processes, but stablecoins push the competitive boundary into cross-border capital scheduling and corporate treasury. PayPal solved online account transfers, and Stripe embedded payment capabilities into merchant software; the stablecoin network needs to solve the programmable flow of currency between different countries, banks, and settlement time zones. The industry is transitioning from the "cryptocurrency trading infrastructure" to the expansion phase of the "enterprise capital operating system."
Essentially, this is a transfer of pricing power: traditional banks charge for the flow of funds based on account systems, settlement cycles, and cross-border agency networks; real-time stablecoin payments shift some value to issuers, exchange channels, wallets, compliance service providers, and the underlying chain. As the availability time of funds shortens, businesses' reliance on bank deposits decreases, and the pricing standards of payment networks will shift from account size to settlement speed, liquidity depth, and compliance coverage.
ABAB News · Law of Cognition
- Funds are not scarce; what is scarce is immediately callable funds.
- Whoever shortens settlement time rewrites cash flow pricing power.
- The ultimate goal of payments is not to be cheaper, but for funds not to wait.