Toku said it will let employers pay workers in stablecoins on Polygon, aiming to turn payroll—one of the world’s most routine and regulated money flows—into a blockchain-native transaction with real-time settlement and low fees.
The company, which markets itself as a compliance-focused platform for stablecoin and token compensation, said the Polygon integration is designed to work alongside existing HR and payroll software such as ADP and Workday, with Toku handling employment contracts, tax withholding, benefits administration and regulatory filings across more than 100 jurisdictions.
The pitch taps into a growing push by crypto infrastructure firms to move beyond trading and speculation and into operational finance—payments, payroll and invoicing—where volumes are recurring and sticky, but compliance requirements are unforgiving. Stablecoins, which are typically pegged to the US dollar, have been gaining traction as a settlement rail for cross-border transfers because they can move 24/7 and clear without correspondent banks.
From “crypto comp” to corporate plumbing
Toku’s announcement leans on a recent Pantera Capital compensation survey, which found that stablecoins dominate crypto-denominated compensation, with USDC and USDT together accounting for more than 90% of reported crypto salary payments. A Thomson Reuters analysis of the same survey flagged that while interest is rising, payroll in stablecoins still runs into hard edges—tax reporting, withholding, worker classification and jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction rules that don’t map neatly onto crypto rails.
Toku has been building around those constraints rather than around a consumer wallet experience. Last year, it partnered with stablecoin payments firm Rain to offer stablecoin payroll in more than 100 countries, framing the product as “instant” payouts that plug into employers’ existing workflows. More recently, Toku has also highlighted integrations aimed at making stablecoin payroll work inside systems used by finance teams, including ADP and Workday.
Toku and partners have separately pointed to scale: a Crossmint case study described Toku as administering more than $1 billion of global payroll using stablecoins.
Why Polygon wants payroll traffic
For Polygon, the tie-up fits a broader strategy to position its network as a payments settlement layer rather than just a venue for decentralized finance. Polygon has been emphasizing retail-sized stablecoin transfers and local-currency stablecoin volume as a wedge into payments adoption.
Polygon handles a large share of USDC transfers in the $100 to $1,000 range in the US—an activity band that proponents argue looks more like everyday commerce than institutional treasury movement.
The payroll use case also arrives as Polygon accelerates dealmaking around stablecoin payments. Polygon Labs said this week it agreed to acquire crypto payments firm Coinme and wallet infrastructure provider Sequence for more than $250 million, as it works toward becoming a regulated US payments player and targets business-to-business payments first.
The practical hurdle: compliance, not throughput
Stablecoin payroll has long been a niche product, partly because employers can’t treat payroll like a casual transfer. Payments must be timed to local pay cycles, backed by documentation, and paired with statutory deductions and filings. A “send” button is the easy part; the hard part is making the payment legally equivalent to payroll across countries that have different labor codes, reporting standards and enforcement norms.
That’s where Toku says it competes: the company positions itself as an intermediary layer that can keep employers on familiar HR systems while moving value over blockchain rails. Toku also promotes employer-of-record style services for hiring across jurisdictions without opening local entities—an approach that could be attractive to globally distributed teams, though it also pulls stablecoin payroll deeper into local employment law.
The Thomson Reuters analysis noted that tax and reporting requirements remain a central friction point—especially in the US, where wage reporting, withholding and documentation standards are tightly enforced even when the “money” arrives as a digital token.
Why does stablecoin payroll matter?
If stablecoin payroll becomes mainstream for certain categories of employers—remote-first companies, global contractor-heavy businesses, or firms paying workers in high-inflation markets—the implications would go beyond crypto HR perks. Payroll is a repeated, predictable flow; it can anchor other services such as earned-wage access, benefits, contractor management, and even small-business treasury operations.
It could also deepen the competition among blockchains to host “boring” payments traffic. Networks that win payroll and invoicing flows may benefit from consistent transaction volume and a pathway to partnerships with traditional fintech providers—even if margins are thin.
The market is still too early. Pantera’s survey suggested crypto compensation is growing but still far from universal, even inside the blockchain industry. Still, the direction of travel is clear: as stablecoins become less of a trading instrument and more of a settlement format, vendors like Toku are trying to package them into something corporate finance teams can use without rewriting how payroll works.
Disclaimer: The information provided on AlexaBlockchain is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Read complete disclaimer here.
Image Credits: Toku