Kraken: How Payward Transforms a Cryptocurrency Exchange into a Multi-Billion Dollar Financial Infrastructure

For many years, Kraken was primarily seen as a cryptocurrency exchange, but its parent company Payward is now building a significantly broader model: a unified platform for trading, payments, banking services, asset management, and infrastructure services for other financial companies.

Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Payward and Kraken, describes the company’s strategy as a transition from a set of individual products to a common financial base. According to him, Payward does not want to be a holding company of disparate businesses.

"This is one platform, one balance, one regulatory stack," said Arjun Sethi.

Over the past two years, Payward has spent billions of dollars on deals and development, strengthening its positions in futures, derivatives, tokenized stocks, and banking directions in the U.S. and Europe. All these steps are aimed at one goal: to gather financial services on a common infrastructure where assets and money can move between products without the usual chain of intermediaries.

A Unified Ledger Instead of a Fragmented Financial System

A key element of Payward’s strategy is what Sethi calls a unified ledger. The idea is that client money and assets can be used across different products within one infrastructure: for trading, lending, collateral, investments, or interaction with DeFi applications.

Payward believes that traditional finance still relies on outdated processes. Settlements for securities take time, markets close at night and on weekends, and banks, brokers, custodians, and clearing organizations maintain their own ledgers, which then have to be reconciled with each other. Each such junction adds an intermediary, delay, and fee.

According to the company, blockchain infrastructure allows for a different organization of asset movement: the same instrument can be an investment, collateral, and a programmable financial object.

Payward divides this model into four directions: trading through Kraken, a banking block, asset management, and Payward Services—a business infrastructure division.

According to Sethi, Kraken has about 6.6 million funded accounts, with between $40 billion and $50 billion in assets concentrated on them. The platform's geography covers over 190 countries and territories.

On this basis, Payward is expanding its product line: cards, lending, derivatives, tokenized stocks, asset-backed loans, and tools for capital utilization in DeFi. This ecosystem also includes Kraken Financial—a special depository organization created in Wyoming.

How Payward's Model Differs from Coinbase and Binance

Payward is not the only company trying to go beyond the classic cryptocurrency exchange. Coinbase is developing the Everything Exchange concept, integrating cryptocurrencies, stocks, derivatives, and prediction markets. Binance is also gathering trading, payments, investments, and yield products on one platform.

However, Architect Partners believes that Payward is moving along a different trajectory. Unlike the approach where all products are concentrated within one consumer brand, Payward is building a regulated infrastructure suitable for different brands, customer segments, and partner channels.

"Payward seems to be choosing a different level of aggregation: a regulated infrastructure platform that can support financial products for different brands, customer groups, and partner channels," said Architect Partners. "In our view, Payward is helping to shape the next stage after the idea of Everything Exchange—a model of the entire financial infrastructure."

Kraken still lags behind its largest competitors in terms of trading volumes. According to CoinGecko, Kraken's average daily spot trading volume for the first four months of 2026 was around $1.1 billion. Binance controlled 38.7% of the spot volume among the ten largest centralized exchanges in the second quarter, while Coinbase reported an 8.6% share of the total crypto trading volume in the first quarter.

Buy, Build, or Partner

Payward's strategy also influences which assets the company acquires. Some technologies are developed in-house, but in cases where development would take years, it prefers deals. Where it is not possible to simply buy the desired market position, Payward seeks partnerships with already established institutions.

One of the largest deals was the acquisition of NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion. This deal provided Payward with brokerage infrastructure for futures in the U.S., technologies, and regulatory approvals that would have taken a long time to obtain and required significant costs.

This was followed by an agreement to acquire Bitnomial for $550 million. This deal strengthens Payward's derivatives direction with regulated infrastructure, including an exchange, clearinghouse, and futures brokerage firm.

The company also stated that it intends to acquire a bank in Europe but did not specify a target. Bloomberg reported in July that Payward plans to buy a Lithuanian bank as part of its European expansion.

Payward does not maintain a broad list of acquisition targets and does not send out requests for proposals to banks. According to the company, it uses a quantitative approach: assessing whether a potential deal closes a specific infrastructure gap and truly adds capabilities needed by clients.

Not all elements of the financial market can be acquired. Therefore, some of Payward's recent steps involve collaboration with organizations that were previously perceived as structures subject to displacement by blockchain technologies.

This month, Nasdaq agreed to invest $100 million in Payward while simultaneously expanding work on Nasdaq Equity tokens and market surveillance technologies. The companies plan to launch tokens in the second quarter of 2027. Payward is expected to provide the infrastructure for distribution, trading, and post-trading operations.

The London Stock Exchange is separately collaborating with Payward to explore the tokenization of public stocks. With regulatory approval, Payward aims to list xStocks—tokenized representations of publicly traded stocks—on the future LSE 24 platform in 2027.

For Payward, such partnerships demonstrate that blockchain does not negate everything that traditional exchanges have built over decades. According to the company, trust remains the main asset of these institutions, and Payward's task is to complement their listing and regulatory infrastructure rather than simply replace it.

"Trust is their currency," said the company.

Legislation is Important, but Payward is Not Waiting for a Pause

Payward continues to develop its platform without waiting for lawmakers to fully establish rules for the crypto market. The company does not view the delay in cryptocurrency legislation in the U.S. as an insurmountable barrier.

The company supported the Transparency Act and has spent several years educating lawmakers. However, according to the company, laws tend to solidify already existing industries rather than create them from scratch.

"Bitcoin has existed for 17 years without a market structure law. Rights emerge first, then laws, and legislation comes later," it stated.

Payward Services Opens Internal Infrastructure to External Companies

Another important direction is transforming technologies created for Kraken into an independent B2B business. Payward Services offers banks, fintech companies, brokers, and crypto platforms a set of APIs to connect to the company's infrastructure.

According to Seta, at least 25 companies are already building products on this basis and plan to launch them this year. Among the partners of the division is Hyperliquid.

Payward Services has grown from the company's own internal systems: custodial storage, liquidity, compliance, risk management, payments, and clearing. Now these capabilities are available to external clients through a single integration.

Architect Partners believes this could provide Payward with a distribution channel that does not rely on direct user acquisition on Kraken. Banks, fintech companies, and brokers will be able to use Payward's infrastructure within their own products and under their own brands.

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This approach creates an additional revenue stream for Payward beyond the trading activity of Kraken clients. At the same time, the company enters the competitive field of crypto firms that sell infrastructure to banks and fintech platforms.

Asset Management Transitions to Tokenized Format

Payward applies a similar logic to investment products. The company has long offered custodial services, staking, and yield products, but is now formalizing this direction as an asset management platform for different managers, strategies, and asset classes.

Payward does not seek simply to obtain traditional investment mandates. The company wants to become a level of execution and distribution through which clients can access structured products, tokenized stocks, credit instruments, and multi-asset class strategies while keeping assets within the Payward platform.

The initial focus is on tokenized stocks. The next step should be structured products that can be broken down into smaller parts and distributed globally. Payward recently partnered with Bitwise on an institutional investment product and intends to onboard new managers and strategies.

Seta explains that externally these products will resemble traditional asset management, but internally they will become tokenized and administered on Payward's platforms. The company expects this will reduce costs and counterparty risks.

IPO is Not an Urgent Necessity

Payward's expansion occurs against the backdrop of preparations for a possible public market entry. However, according to Seta, the IPO is not necessary for the company to finance its plans.

Payward confidentially filed for an IPO in November 2025. Previously, it was reported that the company does not plan to go public before the second quarter of 2027.

Seta did not discuss timelines beyond what is already publicly known. He emphasized that Payward remains profitable, and revenue continues to grow. The listing, he said, will occur when it aligns with the interests of the business, shareholders, and regulators.

The company also does not need external capital for operational activities and is capable of financing investments from its own balance sheet. Recent funding rounds were primarily important as a way to bring in strategic partners, including Citadel Securities and Nasdaq, whose expertise can help develop the platform.

In the second quarter of 2026, Payward reported adjusted revenue of $508 million. This is a 17% increase compared to the previous year.

Ultimately, Payward is trying to simplify the financial system using blockchain technologies and provide retail users access to the infrastructure used by professional trading firms like Jump Trading and Jane Street. Seta articulated this idea succinctly: <<Fix the money, fix the world>>.