Payward, the infrastructure company behind the Kraken exchange, will connect to SoFi's real-time settlement rails and list SoFi's bank-issued stablecoin on its exchange. The partnership, announced Thursday, enables institutional clients on either platform to move dollars at any hour.

Payward joins SoFi's 24/7 rail

Payward is joining the SoFi Exchange Network, the always-on settlement rail launched in April. SoFi is using Payward's prime brokerage, Kraken Prime, to route crypto trades from its app and access deep liquidity.

Kraken will list SoFiUSD, a stablecoin redeemable one-to-one for U.S. dollars, making it available to the platform's retail, professional, and institutional users. SoFi and Payward issued a joint statement on September 3.

SoFiUSD is among a small but growing set of bank-issued dollar tokens, a category that has drawn renewed interest since the U.S. enacted the GENIUS Act in July, establishing a federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoins.

The deal gives institutional traders access to a settlement service that was previously available only to SoFi's business banking clients. Kraken customers can settle and hold dollars on both networks at any time.

SoFi's crypto revenue reached $134.3 million in Q2

Legacy bank rails go dark on nights and weekends, but crypto markets continue to trade. "The financial system should not shut down when markets stay open," SoFi CEO Anthony Noto said in the announcement.

Payward Co-CEO David Ripley said, "Money and markets are converging into a new financial paradigm."

Kraken Prime powers the buy and sell buttons in the SoFi app, and SoFi says the supplemental liquidity should make pricing sharper on trades members are already executing.

SoFi's crypto transaction revenue in the second quarter was $134.3 million, up 10% sequentially, on $1.2 billion of adjusted net revenue overall.

SoFiUSD is part of Big Business Banking, a one-stop fiat-and-crypto service the firm launched in April, beginning on Solana with plans to expand to other chains, Cryptopolitan reported.

In March, Payward's Wyoming-chartered affiliate, Kraken Financial, won a Federal Reserve master account, giving it direct access to the central bank's payment system without an intermediary partner bank. That access, combined with the pending national trust charter application filed in May with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) under the name Payward National Trust Company, positions the firm to operate settlement services directly within the regulated banking system rather than through partner banks.

SoFi Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: SOFI) recently closed Thursday at $18.51, up +3.76% on strong volume, according to Google Finance.