BNY, one of the world’s largest custody banks, is in talks with Payward, the parent of Kraken, about a broad partnership that could encompass crypto products, custody, wealth management, trading, payments and financial-infrastructure services. Those services would likely be offered through Payward Services, the company’s B2B platform for banks, exchanges and asset managers. Discussions are ongoing and may not result in an agreement.
Parts of the prospective partnership could mirror aspects of Payward’s recent infrastructure collaboration with Nasdaq. In September, Nasdaq Ventures agreed to invest $100 million in Payward in a deal public reporting associated with a $21 billion valuation. That Nasdaq agreement covers investment, development of Nasdaq Equity Tokens and adoption of market-surveillance technology across relevant venues, with a target launch of equity tokens in the second quarter of 2027. Payward’s xStocks infrastructure and onchain settlement work — previously reported as more than $25 billion in transaction volume and over $4 billion settled onchain — are central to those plans and inform the scope of potential BNY cooperation.
Payward has expanded beyond Kraken’s spot exchange roots through acquisitions and deals that add regulated U.S. derivatives, stablecoin payments and wallet technology to its stack: the Bitnomial acquisition closed in May and was presented as bringing designated contract market, clearing and futures commission merchant registrations into the group; the company also completed the NinjaTrader acquisition and a stablecoin payments deal described earlier at $600 million. On BNY’s side, the bank has been developing tokenized deposit work beginning with collateral and margin workflows on a private permissioned blockchain while maintaining traditional records and governance. Sources say the negotiations would aim to connect Payward’s crypto-native infrastructure with established financial networks, but concrete terms and a final pact remain uncertain.