Kraken’s parent Payward is betting billions on becoming financial infrastructure, not just a crypto exchange

Payward, the parent company of Kraken, is reorganizing its business around a unified technology and regulatory foundation that the firm calls “one ledger.” Under that design, trading, banking, asset management and business-to-business infrastructure operate on common rails so that money and assets can move between products without multiple intermediaries. Payward’s co-CEO Arjun Sethi described the approach as a single platform with one balance sheet and one regulatory stack. The company has pursued a mix of internal development, acquisitions and partnerships to assemble capabilities. Payward paid $1.5 billion for NinjaTrader to obtain a U.S. futures brokerage platform and regulatory permissions, and it spent $550 million to acquire Bitnomial, adding regulated derivatives infrastructure including an exchange, clearinghouse and futures brokerage. Sethi also said Payward is "about to buy a bank in Europe," and Bloomberg has reported the firm was planning to acquire a Lithuanian bank. Payward is supplementing purchases with strategic partnerships where buying alone would not suffice. Nasdaq agreed to invest $100 million in Payward and to expand collaboration on Nasdaq Equity Tokens and surveillance technology, with plans to launch the tokens in the second quarter of 2027. The London Stock Exchange is also working with Payward to explore tokenized public equities and plans to list xStocks on its LSE 24 venue, subject to regulatory approval. The firm presents its strategy as distinct from other crypto firms that have moved to offer multiple products under a single branded exchange. Architect Partners, a digital-assets investment bank, characterizes Payward’s plan as building regulated infrastructure that can power products across multiple brands, customer segments and partner channels — an "everything financial infrastructure" model. Kraken remains a key customer-facing pillar: it had about 6.6 million funded accounts holding $40–$50 billion in assets and averaged roughly $1.1 billion in daily spot trading during the first four months of 2026, which is smaller than the volume shares reported for Binance and Coinbase in industry data cited in the source.