Sandeep Nailwal says stablecoins have barely touched a $2 quadrillion payments market

Sandeep Nailwal, chief executive of the Polygon Foundation, says stablecoins have barely started in payments and that bank plumbing, not regulation, is what holds them back.

He makes the case as stablecoins worth $303.1 billion circulated across blockchains on Oct. 16, 2026, according to DefiLlama.

Nailwal set out his view on stage at TOKEN2049 in Singapore on Oct. 8, 2026, in a keynote titled "The 2 Quadrillion Dollar Wave". Polygon runs a blockchain network that businesses use for stablecoin payments.

A small share of a very large market

Nailwal put global payments at about $2 quadrillion a year across roughly 3.6 trillion transactions, his own estimate. "The revenue of the payment companies globally is $2.5 trillion," he said.

He put cross-border flows, where stablecoins are already strongest, at about $28 trillion a year, also his estimate. Pure stablecoin payments, he said, run near $390 billion a year.

That matches a McKinsey estimate of annual stablecoin payments, which put them at about 0.02% of the total, Fortune reported in February. By his own figures, $390 billion is about 0.02% of $2 quadrillion, our calculation shows.

The Federal Reserve sees the same opening in cross-border flows. "Much has been said about how stablecoins can potentially improve cross-border payments," Governor Christopher Waller said on Sept. 29, in a speech at Sibos.

'Under 1% penetration'

Nailwal's thesis is that the use case is settled and the market is not. "The real world use case of crypto that has emerged very prominently is the stablecoins," he said.

"Every single use case in payments is under 1% penetration," Nailwal said.

He said that leaves room for growth of 100 times or more, his own projection.

The check: stablecoin supply is large but flat. Supply rose 0.74% over 30 days, according to DefiLlama, so growth in payments will have to come from using the same dollars more often, not only from new issuance.

The plumbing problem

Nailwal said the bottleneck is how banks move money across borders. Businesses "have to maintain a liquidity in different geographies," he said, and he estimated $5 trillion to $7 trillion sits idle in prefunded correspondent accounts, his own figure.

Stablecoins can change that, he argued, so that "you have money wherever in the world in whichever form."

The check: we did not find an independent estimate that confirms the $5 trillion to $7 trillion figure.

Polygon buys its way into licensed payments

Polygon's answer is to own the regulated pieces. "Polygon is trying to come in the middle where we have regulated payment rails," Nailwal said, so a business can use one connection for money in and money out.

The check: the deals are real. Polygon Labs agreed in January 2026 to buy Coinme, a U.S. payments company with money-transmitter licenses in 48 states, and wallet maker Sequence, in a deal valued at more than $250 million, GeekWire reported.

On traction, Nailwal said: "we already have started hitting half a billion dollars in volume" in Polygon's payments push, a company-reported figure. He also said Polygon burned 100 million POL tokens last month, which we could not verify.

Polygon held $2.9 billion in stablecoins on Oct. 16, below Base at $5.2 billion and Arbitrum at $3.6 billion, according to DefiLlama.

The largest pools sit elsewhere. Ethereum held $144.5 billion in stablecoins and Tron $95.1 billion on the same date, by the same data, so Polygon competes for flows rather than balances.

By the numbers

The other side: competition from the payment giants

Polygon is not alone in building the full stack. Stripe and Circle have announced their own payments-focused blockchains, Tempo and Arc, The Defiant reported in August 2025.

Those companies already own the merchant relationships that Polygon is buying licenses to reach. A network that only settles transactions risks losing the margin to whoever owns the customer.

What to watch: monthly volume and closing the deals

The first signal is volume. Nailwal said he expects about $1 billion a month in payments volume within three months, his own forecast.

The second is licensing. He said Polygon is waiting on licenses in the European Union and the UK, which would let its payments stack work outside the U.S.

The third is share. If Polygon's $2.9 billion in stablecoins grows faster than the $303.1 billion market, its full-stack bet is working.

Nailwal's summary of the moment was short: "the blockchains are going mainstream." Volume data over the next quarter will show whether Polygon's share of that shift is growing.

What we do not know is how much of Polygon's payments volume comes from new businesses rather than existing crypto users.

How we reported this: Nailwal's remarks come from his Oct. 8, 2026, TOKEN2049 Singapore keynote, checked against the video's auto-generated captions. Stablecoin figures come from DefiLlama as of Oct. 16; the 0.02% share is our calculation: $390 billion / $2 quadrillion. Deal terms come from GeekWire; the McKinsey estimate from Fortune.