Payward, the parent company of Kraken, is unifying trading, banking, asset management and institutional services on common rails, according to co-CEO Arjun Sethi. The Wyoming-based company has 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. Sethi explained that "We're not a holding company. It's one platform, one balance sheet, one regulatory stack." At the center of the strategy is what Sethi calls "one ledger," which allows money and assets to move between products without the patchwork of intermediaries that sits behind most traditional finance. Payward is not alone in pursuing a broader financial platform, with Coinbase building an "Everything Exchange" and Binance combining trading, payments, investing and yield products into a single platform.
Payward's expansion strategy involves building, buying or partnering to achieve its vision. The company paid $1.5 billion for NinjaTrader to build a U.S. futures brokerage, including technology and regulatory permissions that would have been costly and time-consuming to develop internally. Following that acquisition, Payward completed a $550 million deal for Bitnomial, adding regulated derivatives infrastructure including an exchange, clearinghouse and futures brokerage. The Bitnomial acquisition added a Commodity Futures Trading Commission-regulated designated contract market, derivatives clearing organization and futures commission merchant, making it the first crypto-native U.S. platform to hold the three main CFTC derivatives registrations together. Sethi revealed that "We're about to buy a bank in Europe," without disclosing the target, though Bloomberg reported in July that Payward was planning to buy a Lithuanian bank as part of its European expansion strategy. The company maintains a quantitative framework to determine whether targets fill infrastructure gaps and provide capabilities customers want, rather than maintaining a shopping list or broadly soliciting pitches from bankers.
Payward reported $508 million in adjusted revenue for the second quarter of 2026, marking a 17% increase year-over-year and representing a 17% increase from the previous year period. The company is profitable and in no rush to pursue an IPO as it expands its platform. Asset-based and other revenue represented 60% of total revenue, compared with 55% one year earlier, as the company's revenue mix becomes less dependent on trading fees. Total platform transaction volume fell 18% year over year to $310 billion as crypto spot activity weakened, though traditional futures, equities and tokenized equities grew during the quarter. Futures daily average revenue trades rose 8%, while Kraken has approximately 6.6 million funded accounts holding between $40 billion and $50 billion of assets, across more than 190 countries and territories. Payward confidentially filed for an IPO in November 2025, though the company does not plan to go public before the second quarter of 2027 at the earliest, with Sethi declining to discuss timetable beyond what is public.
Payward's tokenized equity business has drawn partnerships with two established stock market operators. Nasdaq announced on September 10 that Nasdaq Ventures had agreed to invest $100 million in Payward, with the companies expanding work on the Nasdaq Equity Token framework and introducing a new market surveillance agreement. Nasdaq Equity Tokens are expected to launch in the second quarter of 2027, with Payward valued at $21 billion in connection with Nasdaq's investment. The London Stock Exchange has separately partnered with Payward to explore tokenized public equities, planning to list xStocks on its forthcoming LSE 24 venue in 2027, subject to regulatory approval. xStocks are tokenized representations of publicly traded shares and exchange-traded funds, with Payward gaining greater control over the product infrastructure through its acquisition of Backed Finance, which developed the tokenized securities platform. The partnership represents the first meaningful attempt to bring cold storage to stock ownership, a concept that has existed in crypto for years but never really applied to equities until tokenization made it technically possible.
Payward is partnering with established institutions rather than displacing them entirely. Nasdaq's collaboration covers infrastructure for tokenized equities and markets that operate for longer periods than conventional stock trading hours, with Payward providing technology supporting distribution, trading and post-trade functions. The London Stock Exchange plans to list xStocks on its LSE 24 venue during 2027, subject to regulatory approval. Payward Services offers banks, fintech companies, brokerages and crypto platforms through a common set of APIs, with at least 25 companies building products using the infrastructure and expected to launch this year. The division emerged from infrastructure Payward had already built for itself, including custody, liquidity, compliance, risk management, payments and settlement. Payward recently partnered with Bitwise on an institutional investment product and expects to add more managers and strategies, formalizing its asset-management platform to accommodate additional managers, strategies and asset classes. The company completed its purchase of stablecoin payments company Reap in July and agreed to acquire Magic Labs' wallet infrastructure business, bringing technology supporting wallet infrastructure used by around 60 million users into the group.
