Polygon Sees Surge in Local-Currency Stablecoins as JPYC and BBRL Gain Traction
- Local-currency stablecoins on Polygon have shot up as JPYC and BBRL power payments, wallets, lending, and faster regional settlements.
- Brazilian bank Grupo Braza introduced BBRL stablecoin to improve liquidity and enhance payment efficiency in forex payments.
Polygon has recorded rising growth in local-currency stablecoin activity as new projects in Japan and Brazil boost the use cases for on-chain payments. Recent attention has been on yen and real-denominated instruments that facilitate settlements, merchant payments, and cross-border transfers. In Japan, Polygon announced increased JPYC stablecoin use in daily payment and wallet products. The majority of JPYC activity occurs on the network, and integrations are now available for merchant payments, wallet transfers, lending markets and card top-ups. Polygon quoted live consumer payments in Japan using products created with MynaWallet and Digital Garage, where consumers can use JPYC at retail stores. An example is Tria, which allows consumers to use JPYC in the same application flow to top up cards, convert tokens into JPYC, or transfer JPYC to friends.
The stablecoin story is usually told in dollars.
But Asia doesn’t run on dollars.
The most interesting activity right now is in local currencies, built on rails that makes domestic settlement cheaper + faster than anything legacy rails offered.
Take Japan’s JPYC for example 🇯🇵
— Polygon | POL (@0xPolygon) February 26, 2026
JPYC also extends into DeFi through lending markets and a curator-managed JPYC vault on Morpho, built with SteakhouseFi and PAOTECH Labs. This adds yen-denominated liquidity to lending infrastructure and expands the stablecoins use beyond payments. A previous CNF report mentioned that Polygon posted higher daily fees than Ethereum on three consecutive days as Polymarket trading picked up. Token Terminal data showed Polygon at about $407,100 versus Ethereum at $211,700 on Friday, and about $303,000 versus $285,000 the next day. Brazil and LATAM Spur Polygon Stablecoin Growth In Brazil, we reported that Grupo Braza, Brazil’s largest foreign exchange bank, expanded its real-backed stablecoin BBRL to the Polygon network on February 25. The token connects regulated BRL liquidity to blockchain-based payment infrastructure, with Banco Braza aiming to improve payment efficiency and liquidity access. The move is also part of a wider shift toward local-currency rails in digital finance. The network’s regional presence in Latin America is also widening. Chief Executive Officer Marc Boiron stated that Koywe is processing about $30 million per month in LATAM. Boiron added,
Local-currency stablecoins are going to be huge. Give it time.
Polygon stablecoin growth is expanding into real-world payment use cases beyond trading and DeFi. CNF reported that airports in Milan, Rome, and Venice offered instant VAT refunds in USDC on the network during the 2026 Winter Olympics. Early this month, we covered that Polygon proposed PIP-82 to recycle up to $1 million in PoS base gas fees for eligible agentic commerce and x402 transactions. Any unused POL would be burnt, with the program ending after $1 million is recycled or by December 31, 2026. At the time of reporting, POL traded at $0.1104, declining slightly by** 0.59%** over the last 24 hours. The token market cap stood at $1.17 billion while 24-hour trading volume was $87.79 million, down over 13%.
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