Kraken Secures Access to Fed’s Core Payment Systems: WSJ

The banking unit of crypto exchange Kraken has secured approval for a Federal Reserve “master account,” giving it access to the Fed’s core payment systems.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Kraken Financial’s application is expected to be announced today by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, which oversaw its application, and Kraken’s parent company Payward.

The approval “improves reliability and efficiency for moving fiat deposits in and out of digital-asset markets,” Arjun Sethi, co-chief executive of Kraken, told the WSJ.

A Federal Reserve master account is an account at one of the twelve regional Federal Reserve banks that enables regulated depository institutions to maintain account balances at the central bank.

Crypto bank Custodia, which has been engaged in its own long-running bid to secure a Fed master account, took to social media to congratulate Kraken on its success. In a tweet, the firm said that it is “continuing down a dual path of pursuing a Fed master account while expanding our collaborations with traditional banks in the tokenized deposit and stablecoin markets.”

Kraken’s “skinny” master account

According to the WSJ, Kraken Financial’s master account access has some limitations in its services, such as not offering payment of interest on reserves held at the central bank. This is similar to the “skinny” master account concept mooted by the Fed’s board of governors in October last year.

At the time, Fed Governor Christopher J. Waller said that such an account “could be beneficial for those focused primarily on payments innovations,” noting that it could be tailored to the needs of “firms engaged in substantial payments activities that may not want or need all the bells and whistles of a master account, or access to the full suite of Federal Reserve financial services, to successfully innovate and provide services to their customers.”

The move comes as crypto firms are increasingly making inroads on the traditional financial system. To date, companies including Circle, Ripple, Paxos, the Stripe-owned Bridge and Crypto.com have received conditional approval for national trust bank charters from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, enabling them to offer some bank-like services including federally regulated digital asset custody, staking, and trade settlement.

Crypto exchange Coinbase and stablecoin issuer World Liberty Financial have also filed applications—the latter of which has raised the ire of House Democrats, who have warned of potential national security concerns over the firm’s links to the family of U.S. President Donald Trump.

The wave of applications has also faced pushback from traditional banking lobbying groups, with the American Bankers Association writing to the OCC, urging it to slow the pace of crypto charter applications until Congress finalizes the rules they would operate under.