Payward pivots beyond Kraken with $2 billion infrastructure push

The company’s strategy centers on four pillars: trading, banking, asset management, and its B2B arm, Payward Services. While Kraken remains the primary consumer-facing brand, Payward is rapidly integrating traditional financial tools, including futures brokerage, tokenized equities, and payment processing. This shift has tempered the firm’s reliance on volatile crypto trading fees, with asset-based and other services now accounting for 60% of total revenue.

Recent growth has been fueled by high-profile acquisitions, most notably the $1.5 billion purchase of NinjaTrader and the $550 million deal for Bitnomial. These moves grant Payward critical CFTC-regulated infrastructure, allowing it to offer futures and clearing services directly to U.S. clients. Simultaneously, the company is embedding its technology into legacy markets. Nasdaq Ventures recently invested $100 million into Payward to co-develop a tokenized equity framework, while the London Stock Exchange plans to host Payward-backed xStocks on its LSE 24 platform by 2027.

Despite the scale of these investments, Payward maintains that it is not reliant on an immediate initial public offering to sustain its expansion. Although the firm submitted a confidential draft registration for an IPO in late 2025, co-CEO Arjun Sethi emphasized that the company’s profitability and existing strategic backing—including support from Citadel Securities—provide sufficient capital. The firm is currently eyeing a European banking acquisition to further cement its regulatory footprint in the region.