Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, is spending billions of dollars to build a financial platform that combines trading, payments, asset management, and institutional services on shared infrastructure. The company's expansion is increasingly defined by a three-part approach that determines how each new capability is added to the platform.

Build, Buy, or Partner

The strategy rests on three pillars:

• Build what Payward considers core to its platform.
• Buy capabilities that would take too long to develop internally.
• Partner where established financial institutions can accelerate distribution or access.

Over the past two years, Payward has acquired businesses spanning futures, derivatives, trading technology, and tokenized equities. Alongside these deals, the company has expanded its banking and payments capabilities in the United States and Europe, broadening the range of financial services available on its rails.

Acquisitions Bring Tokenized Equities In-House

In January 2026, the company completed its acquisition of Backed, bringing the issuance, trading, and settlement of its xStocks tokenized-equity platform under the same corporate structure. Tokenized equities are blockchain-based representations of traditional shares, so holding issuance, trading, and settlement in-house gives Payward control of the full lifecycle of a product that connects conventional equity markets to crypto rails. Earlier acquisitions included NinjaTrader, Breakout, and other trading infrastructure businesses.

Partnerships to Fill the Gaps

Payward is also using partnerships to fill gaps rather than owning every layer of the financial stack. In September 2026, Nasdaq invested $100 million in Payward at a $21 billion valuation as part of a strategic partnership centered on tokenized equities. The investment ties the two companies together in an area Payward has made central to its expansion through the Backed acquisition, and the $21 billion valuation attached to it provides an external reference point for the company's scale. Payward has also partnered with Ledger to connect its trading, payments, and tokenized-equity infrastructure with Ledger's self-custody technology.

Kraken as the Front End, Payward as the Infrastructure

The result is a model in which Kraken remains the consumer-facing financial platform while Payward operates the underlying infrastructure. In practice, customers interact with the Kraken brand, while the systems powering trading, payments, and tokenized equities are built and operated at the Payward level. Payward co-CEO Arjun Sethi has said the company is working toward a unified system in which trading, banking, asset management, and institutional services can operate across common infrastructure rather than as separate businesses.

The company reported $2.2 billion in adjusted revenue for 2025, up 33% from a year earlier, while adjusted EBITDA rose 26% to $531 million. Trading accounted for 47% of revenue, with the remainder coming from areas including custody, payments, and financing. That mix underscores the diversification behind the build, buy, or partner approach: with trading at 47%, the non-trading services Payward has added already account for the majority of its revenue.

Part of a Broader Industry Shift

Payward's approach reflects a broader shift among large crypto companies toward owning more of the financial stack. Coinbase is expanding beyond crypto into stocks,, and prediction markets, while Binance has combined trading with payments, investing, and yield products.

For Payward, the objective is not simply to add more products to Kraken. It is to make the underlying infrastructure reusable across multiple financial products, markets, and customer segments. That makes build, buy, or partner the central question behind Payward's expansion: build the rails it needs to control, buy businesses that accelerate access to markets and capabilities, and partner where existing financial infrastructure can extend the platform faster. How the pieces already in place — Backed's tokenized-equity issuance, the Nasdaq partnership, and the Ledger self-custody link — combine on the shared infrastructure Sethi describes will be the clearest near-term indicator of the strategy in practice.

Source: BitcoinKE