The crypto industry has spent a decade building digital rails. Now it is building physical ones. In the span of five weeks, Polygon Labs committed $250 million to acquire Coinme and Sequence — the largest infrastructure acquisition in stablecoin history — while Trust Wallet launched cash-to-crypt...
"Cash Deposits is about meeting these users where they are. If you have cash, you now have a fast, direct way to turn it into digital assets that you fully control — no intermediaries holding your funds, and no reliance on traditional banks." — Felix Fan, CEO, Trust Wallet
The crypto industry has spent a decade building digital rails. Now it is building physical ones. In the span of five weeks, Polygon Labs committed $250 million to acquire Coinme and Sequence — the largest infrastructure acquisition in stablecoin history — while Trust Wallet launched cash-to-crypto deposits at more than 15,000 U.S. retail locations. Together, these moves signal that the next frontier of crypto adoption is not another protocol war or layer-2 rollup. It is the bodega counter.
The thesis is straightforward: 5.6 million American households have no bank account. Another 19 million are underbanked. Two-thirds of the unbanked rely entirely on physical cash. Until this week, the crypto economy had no scalable answer for them. That is changing. The convergence of licensed money-transmitter networks, self-custodial wallets, and stablecoin settlement is producing a new category of financial infrastructure — one that converts paper currency into programmable money at the point of sale, bypassing banks entirely.
This report examines the economic architecture of crypto's physical onramp buildout, the competitive dynamics shaping its execution, and the structural implications for stablecoin adoption, financial inclusion, and the $900 billion global remittance market.
The FDIC's 2023 National Survey found that 4.2% of U.S. households — approximately 5.6 million — lack any bank or credit union account. The underbanked population is far larger: 14.2% of households (19 million) maintain accounts but still rely primarily on nonbank financial products. Among the fully unbanked, two-thirds conduct all transactions in cash.
The demographic profile is stark. Unbanked rates among Black households stand at 10.6%, Hispanic households at 9.5%, and American Indian or Alaska Native households at 12.2% — compared to 1.9% for White households. The most cited reason for lacking an account: insufficient funds to meet minimum balance requirements. The second: distrust of banks.
These populations represent a structural blind spot in crypto's growth narrative. Every exchange onramp, every DeFi protocol, every stablecoin yield product presumes the user has a bank account, a debit card, or at minimum a digital payment method. The unbanked and underbanked have been priced out of the digital economy not by technology, but by the assumption that everyone has already been banked.
On February 18, 2026, Trust Wallet launched Cash Deposits — the first cash-to-crypto onramp offered by a major self-custodial wallet at retail scale. Powered by Coinme's infrastructure, the feature allows users across the United States (excluding New York, Vermont, and — for stablecoin purchases — Texas) to walk into a participating retail location, deposit physical cash, and receive Bitcoin, Solana, USDC, or other supported digital assets directly in their Trust Wallet.
The mechanics matter. This is not a custodial service. No intermediary holds the user's funds post-conversion. The cash enters through Coinme's licensed money-transmission network, and the corresponding digital assets are delivered to the user's self-custodial wallet. The user retains full control of their private keys. Nearly 90% of the U.S. population lives within five miles of a participating retail location, according to Coinme's network data.
The significance is less about Trust Wallet specifically and more about what it represents: a self-custodial wallet with over 100 million downloads now offers a path from physical dollar bills to programmable stablecoins without ever touching a bank. For an unbanked worker paid in cash, this is the first frictionless gateway into the stablecoin economy.
Five weeks before Trust Wallet's launch, Polygon Labs announced definitive agreements to acquire both Coinme and Sequence for more than $250 million — the largest infrastructure-focused acquisition by a blockchain protocol to date.
The deal's architecture is revealing. Coinme, founded in 2014 as one of the first licensed digital currency exchanges in the U.S., brings money-transmitter licenses in 48 states, partnerships with MoneyGram and Coinstar, and a physical cash-to-crypto network spanning more than 50,000 retail locations. Sequence, a wallet infrastructure provider, contributes smart wallet technology and cross-chain orchestration designed to simplify payment flows across multiple blockchains without requiring users to manage bridging, swaps, or gas fees.
Together, these companies form the foundation of Polygon's Open Money Stack — a modular framework unveiled in January 2026 that bundles blockchain settlement, wallet infrastructure, fiat on/off-ramps, compliance tooling, onchain identity, and stablecoin interoperability into a single, developer-facing interface. As Polygon CEO Marc Boiron told Fortune: "Stablecoins are increasingly being used as a settlement layer for global payments, but the infrastructure around them remains fragmented."
Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal framed the strategy more bluntly: "It's a reverse Stripe in a way. Polygon Labs is becoming a full-blown fintech company."
The Coinme transaction is expected to close in Q2 2026, subject to regulatory approvals. The Sequence deal is expected to close imminently. The deal prices were not individually disclosed, but reporting indicates Coinme was valued between $100 million and $125 million, with Sequence between $125 million and $150 million.
Polygon and Trust Wallet are not entering an empty market. The crypto ATM industry has been building physical infrastructure for years, with more than 38,700 machines installed globally as of early 2025. Bitcoin Depot leads with approximately 8,500 kiosks and a 22% global market share, followed by CoinFlip with 5,289 machines. Bitcoin Depot's BDCheckout product has expanded to more than 10,900 retail locations.
The global crypto ATM market was valued at approximately $190 million in 2024 and is projected to reach between $7.6 billion and $15 billion by the early 2030s, with compound annual growth rates ranging from 55% to 63%, depending on the source.
But there is a critical distinction between the ATM model and the emerging retail-onramp model. Crypto ATMs typically charge fees between 10% and 23% — a tax that disproportionately burdens the cash-dependent populations they purport to serve. The retail deposit model, powered by Coinme's licensed money-transmission rails, operates at materially lower fee points and integrates directly into self-custodial wallets rather than requiring a separate hardware interface.
The strategic question is whether crypto ATM operators can adapt to retail-integrated models, or whether the Polygon/Coinme/Trust Wallet stack will displace them by offering a cheaper, more ubiquitous alternative embedded in the 15,000+ retail locations where cash-dependent consumers already shop.
The global remittance market moves approximately $900 billion annually. Average fees remain above 6% in many corridors, with the World Bank documenting that sending $200 to Sub-Saharan Africa costs an average of 7.9%. This fee extraction from the world's poorest cross-border workers has been one of the most persistent failures of the traditional financial system.
Stablecoins have long been positioned as a solution, but the cash-in/cash-out problem has limited their reach. A migrant worker in Houston earning cash cannot use USDC to send money to family in Tegucigalpa if there is no cash-to-stablecoin bridge on either end. MoneyGram — already a Coinme partner — has begun addressing this by launching stablecoin remittances to Colombia via its mobile app, choosing that corridor because of the high volume of U.S.-to-Colombia flows and the Colombian peso's inflationary volatility.
The integration of Coinme's physical cash network into Polygon's Open Money Stack creates the architecture for a more systematic attack on remittance corridors. If the cash-in infrastructure exists at 50,000+ U.S. retail locations, and stablecoin settlement can occur on Polygon or other chains in seconds at near-zero cost, the remaining challenge is cash-out infrastructure in destination countries. Polygon's stated ambition to make the Open Money Stack interoperable across chains and geographies directly targets this gap.
The IMF acknowledged this trajectory in December 2025, noting that stablecoins "can improve payments and global finance" particularly in corridors where traditional banking infrastructure is thin.
Applying the economic-value-distribution framework to the physical onramp stack reveals where value accrues:
Infrastructure Layer (Coinme/Polygon): Captures money-transmission licensing value, per-transaction fees from cash-to-crypto conversions, and the strategic premium of being embedded in 50,000+ retail endpoints. The $250 million Polygon acquisition prices this infrastructure at roughly $5,000 per retail location — a fraction of what a single crypto ATM costs to install and maintain.
Wallet Layer (Trust Wallet/Sequence): Captures user relationship and data value. Self-custodial wallets that serve as the endpoint for cash deposits become the gateway for all subsequent DeFi, staking, and stablecoin yield interactions. The user acquired through a cash deposit at a retail counter has lifetime economic value that extends far beyond the initial conversion fee.
Settlement Layer (Polygon/multiple chains): Captures transaction fees on stablecoin transfers, cross-chain settlement, and smart contract execution. Boiron has stated explicitly: "We fully expect payments to settle on multiple chains. Payments are so big there will always be many chains."
Retail Partners: Capture foot traffic and small per-transaction commissions. For convenience stores and retail chains, cash-to-crypto deposits represent incremental revenue from infrastructure they already operate.
The losers in this value redistribution are crypto ATM operators charging 10-23% fees, traditional money-transfer operators extracting 6%+ on remittances, and banks that have failed to serve the 24.6 million unbanked and underbanked households now being courted by crypto-native infrastructure.
Trust Wallet launched the first major self-custodial cash-to-crypto onramp at 15,000+ U.S. retail locations on February 18, 2026, powered by Coinme — allowing unbanked users to convert physical cash to BTC, SOL, and USDC without a bank account.
Polygon Labs committed $250 million to acquire Coinme and Sequence in January 2026, building the Open Money Stack — a modular stablecoin payments framework designed to bridge physical cash and onchain settlement at global scale.
The unbanked market is structurally underserved: 5.6 million U.S. households lack bank accounts and 19 million are underbanked, with two-thirds of the unbanked relying entirely on cash. Minority communities face disproportionate exclusion.
Crypto ATMs face disruption: The 38,700+ global crypto ATM network charges 10-23% fees. Retail-integrated onramps operating through licensed money-transmitter rails offer a cheaper, more accessible alternative.
The $900 billion remittance market is the endgame. Physical cash onramps in the U.S. combined with stablecoin settlement and emerging cash-out networks in destination countries create the architecture for a full-stack remittance alternative.
The crypto industry's most consequential infrastructure buildout in 2026 is not happening onchain. It is happening at retail counters, convenience stores, and MoneyGram locations across the United States. Polygon's $250 million bet on Coinme and Sequence, combined with Trust Wallet's 15,000-location cash deposit launch, represent a coordinated assault on the oldest problem in financial inclusion: how to give cash-dependent populations access to programmable money.
The economic logic is compelling. The regulatory foundation — 48-state money-transmitter licensing, SEC-defined securities exemptions, and growing bipartisan support for stablecoin legislation — is in place. The unresolved question is execution: whether the Open Money Stack can deliver on its promise of seamless fiat-to-stablecoin conversion at global scale, and whether cash-out infrastructure in remittance destination countries can keep pace with the cash-in buildout now underway in the U.S.
What is no longer in question is the direction of travel. Crypto's next billion users will not arrive through DeFi dashboards or NFT mints. They will arrive through cash registers.