Payward Expands Kraken Into a Broader Financial Platform
Payward has bought billions of dollars worth of futures and payments businesses and is working with Nasdaq, Deutsche Börse, and SoFi on tokenized assets and bank connections.
Key Takeaways
- Payward is turning Kraken into a broader financial platform with trading, banking, asset management, and B2B services on one infrastructure.
- The company bought NinjaTrader, Bitnomial, and Reap Technologies, among others, to expand futures, derivatives, payments, and banking capabilities.
- According to co-CEO Arjun Sethi, Payward is profitable, adjusted revenue rose to $508 million in Q2 2026, and an IPO is not urgent.
Payward, Kraken's parent company, is rapidly building a much broader financial platform than just a crypto exchange. The company wants to bring trading, banking, asset management, and services for other companies together on one infrastructure, while co-CEO Arjun Sethi says Payward is profitable and in no rush to go public.
From Exchange to Platform
Kraken has grown into a major crypto exchange over the past 15 years, but Payward's focus now goes far beyond spot trading. Over the past two years, the company has bought billions of dollars worth of businesses that expand its reach into futures, derivatives, tokenized stocks, and additional banking capabilities in the United States and Europe.
According to Sethi, the strategy is built around one platform, one balance sheet, and one regulatory stack. In practice, that means money and assets should be able to move between products without the separate links that are often needed in traditional finance. Payward calls that a one-ledger model.
The company breaks that approach into four parts: trading through Kraken, banking, asset management, and Payward Services, its business-to-business arm. According to Sethi, Kraken has about 6.6 million funded accounts with a combined $40 billion (€35.1 billion) to $50 billion (€43.8 billion) in assets, spread across more than 190 countries and territories.
Acquisitions and Partnerships
Payward is not just building everything itself. It is also buying capabilities that would otherwise take years to set up, and working with established players where that makes more sense. For example, it paid $1.5 billion (€1.3 billion) for NinjaTrader to build a U.S. futures brokerage, and $550 million (€482 million) for Bitnomial, which added regulated derivatives infrastructure.
The recent Bitnomial acquisition gave Payward a fully CFTC-licensed U.S. derivatives platform. That lets the company roll out regulated spot margin and perpetual futures products in the U.S., a move that fits the broader shift from pure trading to financial infrastructure.
Payward is also expanding outside the U.S. In May, it bought Reap Technologies, a Hong Kong-based company focused on card issuing and stablecoin payments, for $600 million (€526 million). That strengthened the company's payments infrastructure in a market where crypto and traditional payment flows are increasingly overlapping.
Payward is also actively seeking partnerships with major financial names. Nasdaq Ventures invested $100 million in Payward in September to further develop tokenized equities and market surveillance technology. Deutsche Börse took a 1.5 percent stake in the company in April for $200 million (€175 million). And Payward is also working with SoFi on a link between SoFi's banking network and Kraken's trading infrastructure, so 24/7 U.S. dollar transactions can move between the two networks.
Why This Matters
For European crypto readers, this strategy shows how far the industry is moving toward regulated financial infrastructure. Payward is not just trying to pull more trading volume to Kraken, but also to bring banking services, tokenized equities, and B2B services under one system. That could matter for how crypto exchanges, banks, and stock market platforms in Europe work together in the future.
The timing is also notable because, according to Sethi, Payward does not depend on an IPO to keep growing. The company says it can fund its expansion from its own balance sheet and reported $508 million (€445 million) in adjusted revenue in the second quarter of 2026, up 17 percent from a year earlier. A public listing is still possible, but according to Sethi, only when it makes sense for the company, shareholders, and regulators.
