Payward Aims to Build Financial Infrastructure Beyond Kraken Exchange

Payward, the parent company of Kraken exchange, is making a significant push to become a major financial infrastructure provider. According to an interview with Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Payward, the company has spent heavily on acquisitions that have expanded its footprint in the futures and derivatives spaces, as well as tokenized stocks. These moves are part of a larger goal of transforming Payward into a unified financial platform combining trading, banking, asset management, and services for other businesses.

The 'one ledger' system, described by Sethi, allows money and assets to move between products without the need for intermediaries that underpin traditional finance. This is in contrast to other companies like Coinbase, which are developing their own platforms, while Binance is melding trading, payments, investing, and yield products into a single platform.

Payward's approach, however, is different, as it aims to construct infrastructure that can support multiple brands and be used by third-party financial companies. 'Payward appears to be choosing a different aggregation layer: the regulated infrastructure stack that can power financial products across multiple brands, customer segments, and partner channels,' Architect Partners said.