Kraken’s parent Payward is building a financial empire that goes far beyond crypto trading

Payward has divided that vision into four pillars: trading through Kraken, banking, asset management and Payward Services, its business-to-business infrastructure division.

Kraken has about 6.6 million funded accounts holding between $40 billion and $50 billion of assets, according to Sethi, across more than 190 countries and territories.

To grow its vision of a unified financial platform, Payward is now adding services around those accounts, including cards, lending, derivatives and tokenized equities, as well as products that allow customers to borrow against assets or deploy them in decentralized-finance applications. Kraken Financial, its Wyoming-chartered special-purpose depository institution, also forms part of the stack.

Build, buy or partner

That thesis is also shaping what the company is buying.

While Payward builds some capabilities internally, it also acquires others that would take years to replicate and partners with institutions whose position cannot simply be bought.

Payward paid $1.5 billion for the acquisition of NinjaTrader to build a U.S. futures brokerage, including its technology and regulatory permissions, which would have been costly and time-consuming, Sethi said. It followed that with a $550 million deal for Bitnomial, adding regulated derivatives infrastructure, including an exchange, clearinghouse and futures brokerage.

The firm is also “about to buy a bank in Europe,” Sethi said, without disclosing who the target was. Bloomberg reported in July that Payward was planning to buy a Lithuanian bank as part of its strategy to expand on the continent.

The company does not maintain a shopping list or broadly solicit pitches from bankers. Instead, it uses a quantitative framework to determine whether a target fills an infrastructure gap and provides capabilities customers want, Sethi said.