Payward, the company behind Kraken, is expanding beyond exchange trading. Its plan to acquire a European bank sits alongside payments infrastructure and work on tokenized equities for other businesses.
Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, is preparing to acquire a bank in Europe. Co-CEO Arjun Sethi disclosed the plan in a September 26 interview with CoinDesk, without naming the target. His remarks were not an announcement of a completed acquisition.
“About to buy a bank in Europe.”
Payward’s business services help explain why its banking ambitions extend beyond Kraken’s own users. The group wants other businesses to use the trading and payment infrastructure behind its platforms in their own products. The company’s post about the interview, published the same day, also highlighted that broader business.
Payward’s September 26 post about the interview
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The infrastructure behind the exchange opens to other businesses
The official Payward Services product page groups trading, custody, payments, staking and tokenized equities under one offering. Its intended customers range from banks and fintech companies to asset managers. A business can use Payward’s infrastructure behind the scenes while serving customers under its own brand.
That serves a different purpose from the Kraken Pro trading interface: instead of opening another screen for individual traders, it lets other companies add financial services to their own applications. The business providing the customer experience and the provider operating the underlying services can therefore have separate roles.
Reap deal closed; Nasdaq project targets 2027
On payments, one acquisition has already closed. Payward announced the completion of its Reap purchase on July 1. Reap adds card issuance, cross-border payments and stablecoin-based treasury management to Payward Services. It continues to operate with its own brand and management team. Unlike the European bank plan, this transaction is recorded by the company as complete.
The equities timeline extends further ahead. According to the September 10 announcement, Nasdaq Ventures signed an agreement to invest $100 million in Payward. The Nasdaq Equities Tokenization (NET) platform is expected to launch in the second quarter of 2027. The release emphasizes preserving issuer and investor rights: with asset tokenization, the rights represented matter alongside the technology used to record transactions.
Availability differs by market. Payward Services says access depends on a client’s jurisdiction, regulatory status and relevant licensing. Providing services through shared infrastructure does not mean that every user can access the same products.
For this expansion in the crypto exchange sector, the next concrete milestone will be disclosure of the European bank target and the deal’s terms. The current picture combines a completed payments acquisition, a future equities-platform launch and a banking purchase plan whose target remains unnamed.
