[Polygon Launches Privacy Stablecoin Payment Feature, Targeting Institutional Market] Deep Tide TechFlow reports that on May 5, according to Cointelegraph, Ethereum scaling solution Polygon announced on Sunday the launch of a privacy stablecoin payment feature to attract more enterprises and institutions to use its network. This feature routes transactions through shielded pools via wallets and is verified using zero-knowledge proofs, as part of Polygon's integration with the privacy protocol Hinkal. Polygon's community lead, Smokey, stated on the X platform that for on-chain payments to go mainstream, privacy protection is essential—not "privacy to evade regulation," but "operational privacy." Polygon emphasized that "confidentiality is the biggest gap between on-chain rails and the actual needs of institutional finance." Banks, treasuries, and payment teams will not shift their operations to a ledger that broadcasts counterparties and transaction amounts to every observer on the network. The new feature hides transaction information from the market while maintaining compliance and auditability. Polygon noted that "privacy means opacity to the market but not to regulators." Every private transaction undergoes a "Know Your Transaction" (KYT) review before execution. Hinkal's documentation shows that users can generate audit files to submit to tax authorities or regulators. This move by Polygon follows Aptos' launch of its privacy feature, Confidential APT, on April 24. According to DefiLlama data, the total market capitalization of stablecoins on Polygon reached an all-time high of $3.6 billion on April 10, making it the eighth-largest stablecoin chain.