Over the past two years, Kraken’s parent company Payward has poured billions into expanding beyond simple bitcoin trading. The Wyoming-based firm is now working to bring together trading, banking, asset management and institutional services onto a single shared infrastructure, according to co-CEO Arjun Sethi.
“We’re not a holding company,” Sethi said. “It’s one platform, one balance sheet, one regulatory stack.”
One Platform, One Ledger
Architect Partners, a digital-assets investment bank, says Payward is not going down the path of a Kraken-branded super app. The firm claims the company is pursuing a separate strategy instead.
“Payward appears to be choosing a different aggregation layer: the regulated infrastructure stack that can power financial products across multiple brands, customer segments, and partner channels.”
Payward has been described by Architect Partners as being “helping define the next evolution beyond the ‘Everything Exchange’: an ‘Everything Financial Infrastructure’ model.”.
The central concept is a shared layer “one ledger.”, which enables money and assets to flow across trading, banking, asset management and institutional services without the need for the separate middlemen that typically stand behind traditional finance.
The argument put forward by Payward is that a great deal of the old financial system still relies on technology and market rules from decades past. Settling securities takes time, markets shut down overnight and at weekends, and banks, brokers, custodians and clearing houses keep their own separate records that need to be brought into line with each other. Every point where one institution meets another adds another middleman, another delay and another charge.
Sethi explained that blockchain systems provide an option, letting assets serve as investments, collateral and programmable instruments across a shared infrastructure.
Four Pillars, One Stack
Payward has divided its vision into four pillars:
- Trading through Kraken
- Banking
- Asset management
- Payward Services, its business-to-business infrastructure division
According to Sethi, Kraken holds roughly 6.6 million funded accounts, spanning over 190 countries and territories, with assets ranging from $40 billion to $50 billion.
Payward’s push toward a single financial platform has expanded beyond mere accounts to include additional services, such as cards, lending, derivatives and tokenized equities. Borrowing against assets and deploying them in decentralized-finance applications are among the offerings available to customers. Kraken Financial, the Wyoming-chartered special-purpose depository institution, sits at the heart of the company’s stack.
Build, Buy or Partner
Some capabilities Payward develops on its own, while other skills come from acquisitions rather than years of effort, and it also joins forces with institutions whose standing can’t be purchased.
Sethi said the firm paid $1.5 billion to acquire NinjaTrader, which built out its U.S. futures brokerage, complete with technology and regulatory permissions. The next move was a $550 million deal for Bitnomial, bringing in regulated derivatives infrastructure, including an exchange, clearinghouse and futures brokerage.
Sethi confirmed that Payward is also “about to buy a bank in Europe,” though he did not reveal the identity of the target. Bloomberg reported in July that Payward was planning to acquire a Lithuanian bank as part of its strategy to expand across the continent.
Sethi explained that the firm does not keep a shopping list or reach out widely for pitches from banks. Rather, it relies on a quantitative framework to decide if a target addresses an infrastructure gap and delivers capabilities that customers desire.
Blockchain technology was once meant to replace the old institutions that make up the financial system. But Payward has not always treated them as rivals to defeat. Instead, some of its most important recent moves have involved joining forces with these very incumbents.
This month, Nasdaq committed to putting $100 million into Payward while broadening its work on Nasdaq Equity Tokens and market surveillance technology. The two firms plan to release the tokens during the second quarter of 2027, with Payward handling distribution, trading and post-trade infrastructure.
Payward has teamed up with the London Stock Exchange on its own project involving tokenized public equities. The exchange says it intends to list xStocks, provided it gets the necessary regulatory approval.
Competitors and Scale
Payward is not alone in pursuing a broader financial platform. Coinbase is building an “Everything Exchange” spanning crypto, stocks, derivatives and prediction markets, while Binance is combining trading, payments, investing and yield products into a single platform.
Architect Partners says Payward is taking a distinct approach from Coinbase.
CoinGecko data indicate Kraken averaged roughly $1.1 billion in daily spot trading across the first four months of 2026, a fraction of the size commanded by its rivals. Binance led the pack with 38.7% of top-10 centralized-exchange spot volume in the second quarter, while Coinbase posted an 8.6% share of total crypto trading volume for the first quarter.
| Company | Role | Recent Move |
|---|---|---|
| Payward | Parent company | $1.5B NinjaTrader, $550M Bitnomial, European bank pending |
| Coinbase | Competitor | Building an “Everything Exchange” |
| Binance | Competitor | Combining trading, payments, investing and yield |
Profitable and Patient
Sethi explained that Payward has reached profitability and shows no urgency to go public as it keeps building out its platform.
The firm’s strategy involves a deliberate, targeted acquisition and development of capabilities. Whether it outpaces the Everything Exchange method has yet to be determined. At present, Payward is committing heavily to the infrastructure play, pouring billions into it while staying true to its quantitative framework.
Source material: “Kraken’s parent Payward is betting billions on becoming financial infrastructure, not just a crypto exchange,” CoinDesk.
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