Polygon Labs today announces that Polygon PoS, the premier blockchain for payments and Real World Assets (RWA), has been selected by Flutterwave, Africa’s largest payments infrastructure that has processed over $40 billion in transaction volume to date, to serve as the default blockchain network to power its new cross-border payments product. 

The partnership positions Polygon’s infrastructure as foundational to payment flows globally and marks a watershed moment for real-world stablecoin adoption in emerging markets. 

Flutterwave will begin a phased rollout of Polygon, starting with a pilot program for select Flutterwave for Business customers in 2025. The solution will be made fully available to all Flutterwave for Business and Send App users in 2026, significantly boosting remittances and facilitating even more cross-border payments.

The collaboration will see Flutterwave integrate Polygon’s high-performance blockchain infrastructure to enable faster, cheaper cross-border payments for its extensive network of global multinationals like Uber, Audiomack, etc. 

“Thriving African businesses lose revenue each year to slow, expensive cross-border payments. Flutterwave saw what we see: stablecoins on Polygon can advance settlement times from days to seconds and high fees into pennies,” said Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs “It’s a massive vote of confidence in stablecoins as the future of cross-border payments.”

The partnership’s first phase will focus on enterprise clients to enable major corporations to leverage stablecoin rails for payment flows, which will dramatically reduce settlement times from days to seconds and cut costs.

After the initial phase, the partnership aims to expand to consumer remittances through Flutterwave’s Send App to bring affordable, instant cross-border payments to millions of individuals.

“Businesses in emerging economies process billions in cross-border payments annually, yet still face high costs and slow settlement times,” said Olugbenga “GB” Agboola, CEO and Founder of Flutterwave. “By partnering with Polygon, we’re introducing a solution that makes international payments even more simple and affordable than many local ones. This revolution will unlock new economic opportunities across the continent.”

The partnership addresses critical pain points in the $2 trillion global cross-border payments market, where businesses and consumers in emerging economies face some of the highest transaction costs globally—often exceeding 8% for remittances. By leveraging Polygon’s sub-$0.01 transaction fees and near-instant settlement, Flutterwave can offer its clients dramatically improved economics and user experience.

This partnership creates a blueprint for stablecoin adoption in emerging markets, where traditional banking infrastructure often fails to meet the needs of rapidly growing digital economies. With Flutterwave operating across 30+ African countries and supporting 150+ currencies, the integration demonstrates how blockchain technology can solve real-world payment challenges at a massive scale.

The collaboration comes after several recent milestones for Polygon which have cemented its position in the institutional payment sector, including processing half of all USDC transfers in the $100-$1,000 range in the United States, powering BlackRock’s BUIDL Fund tokenisation through Securitize (with over $1B AUM), and supporting breakthrough applications like Polymarket—which has processed over $1.1 billion in cumulative volume and become a mainstream breakout dApp, and recently secured a $2bn investment from Intercontinental Exchange, Inc (ICE), reflecting a valuation of approximately $8 billion pre-investment.

By joining forces, Polygon and Flutterwave are setting a new global benchmark for how blockchain can solve real-world payment challenges at scale.