Polygon CEO Says On-Chain Payments Will Transform Global Money Movement in 2026

• Polygon CEO Sandeep Nailwal highlighted discussions at the Money Rails event, where over 1,000 participants explored developments in TradFi–DeFi integration, micropayments, tokenization, and privacy.
• He emphasized that Polygon aims to solve existing payment system inefficiencies of slow transfers, high fees, and limited access.

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Sandeep Naiwal, the CEO of the Polygon blockchain network, stated that the year 2026 will be pivotal for the platform, along with the global expansion of on-chain, cross-border payments. Naiwal’s comments come just as the blockchain network has been stitching key partnerships with big market players like Revolut and Mastercard recently.

Furthermore, developers have been putting consistent efforts to boost the ecosystem capabilities, while catering to the evolving real-world assets (RWA) and tokenization market.

Sandeep Nailwal Bets on Polygon’s 2026 Performance

Polygon CEO is extremely bullish about the blockchain’s performance, moving into 2026, adding that it will be a pivotal year for the platform. He noted that the company received strong momentum at the Money Rails event, with more than 1000 attendees discussing innovations across the payments landscape.

These discussions centered around TradFi integrations and DeFi rails to micropayments in emerging markets, institutional asset tokenization, and privacy solutions. Additionally, the event featured two major announcements involving Revolut and Mastercard.

As mentioned in our previous report, Revolut has expanded its crypto capabilities by integrating Polygon’s blockchain across its global platform. It enables instant stablecoin transfers as well as POL trading and staking for users in 38 countries. Similarly, Mastercard partnered with Polygon to expand its Crypto Credential platform to self-custody wallets.

Company CEO Sandeep Nailwal highlighted persistent issues in the current payment system. This includes multi-day transfer times, high and opaque fees, and limited access for billions of unbanked individuals in emerging markets.

He said Polygon is focused on addressing these challenges by enabling faster and cheaper payments, improving user experience through simplified interfaces, tokenizing real-world assets and traditional asset classes, and building a global interoperability network designed to make payments seamless across chains.

Making Key Push In RWA And Eyeing 100,000 TPS

Polygon is becoming the preferred choice for the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) while aiming to boost its transaction throughput. Its network architecture offers high throughput, low transaction costs, and advanced zero-knowledge (ZK) technology, providing a robust environment for issuing and scaling stablecoins.

Its Proof-of-Stake chain operates on a hybrid framework featuring Heimdall and a Tendermint-based validator layer.

At a recent industry event, Polygon co-founder and CEO Sandeep Nailwal outlined his vision for the future of digital infrastructure, emphasizing that stablecoins and digital assets are positioned to drive the next major evolution in global payments. He stated that the market opportunity for payments and stablecoins could exceed $1 trillion, as reported by CNF.

Nailwal also highlighted performance gains following Polygon’s Rio upgrade, noting that network throughput has increased from 200 to 2,000 transactions per second (TPS). He added that Polygon expects to reach 5,000 TPS in the coming months, with a long-term goal of scaling to 100,000 TPS across its ecosystem.

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