BNY Mellon in Talks with Payward to Form Cryptocurrency Partnership

Custody banking giant BNY Mellon is in talks with Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, to form a broad partnership. The potential agreement would cover areas including crypto products, custody, wealth management, trading, payments, and infrastructure, provided through Payward Services. The partnership could resemble the infrastructure component of Payward's recent agreement with Nasdaq, according to one source.

The proposed partnership is part of Payward's efforts to connect its digital-asset operations with established financial institutions. Payward has been expanding its platform through acquisitions, including its $1.5 billion acquisition of retail futures platform NinjaTrader in 2025. It also recently pushed its planned initial public offering to the second quarter of 2027 due to difficult market conditions.

BNY Mellon has been developing tokenized deposits to support near-real-time onchain settlement between institutional market participants. The company has also been investing in digital-asset infrastructure, including its recent agreement with Nasdaq to invest $100 million in Payward at a $21 billion valuation.