Kraken’s parent Payward is betting billions on becoming financial infrastructure, not just a crypto exchange
Kraken parent Payward is unifying trading, payments, asset management and institutional services on common rails, co-CEO Arjun Sethi said.
Kraken spent most of its 15 years building a crypto exchange. Over the past two years, its parent company has been buying and building the pieces of something much bigger.
Payward, its Wyoming-based parent company, spent billions on acquisitions that expanded its reach into futures and derivatives, pushed into tokenized stocks, and pursued additional banking capabilities in the U.S. and Europe.
The moves are part of a bigger goal to turn Payward into a unified financial platform where trading, banking, asset management and services for other businesses can operate under the same infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the London Stock Exchange has separately partnered with Payward to explore tokenized public equities. Subject to regulatory approval, it plans to list xStocks, tokenized representations of publicly traded shares, on its forthcoming LSE 24 venue in 2027.