Kraken Parent Payward Partners With Singapore Gulf Bank for 24/7 Dollar Settlement
Key Takeaways
- •Payward, the parent company of Kraken, has partnered with Singapore Gulf Bank to enable round-the-clock US dollar settlement for select institutional clients across Asia and the Gulf region.
- •The integration of SGB Net, the Bahrain-regulated bank's real-time clearing network, allows participating institutions to settle dollar transactions instantly rather than waiting for traditional banking hours.
- •The settlement service is already operational for its initial group of institutions, and the two companies plan to expand it to more clients and additional currencies.
- •Singapore Gulf Bank will gain access to digital asset liquidity through Kraken Prime and will use Payward's markets to price customer trades for its clients in the coming months.
- •Unlike other global settlement initiatives such as the JPMorgan-led tokenized deposit network and the Bank of Korea's won pilot, which are slated for 2027 or still in testing, the Payward–SGB integration is already in operation.
Kraken parent company Payward has partnered with Singapore Gulf Bank (SGB) to enable 24/7 US dollar settlement for select institutional clients across Asia and the Gulf region, the companies said.
Under the agreement, Payward has integrated SGB Net, the Bahrain-regulated bank's real-time clearing network, allowing participating institutions to settle US dollar transactions instantly at any time rather than waiting for conventional banking windows. The constraint is a long-standing friction point for digital asset markets, which trade around the clock while traditional bank settlement has generally been confined to business days and hours. The service initially covers a select group of institutions, and according to a Monday press release, the two companies plan to expand it to more clients and currencies going forward.
The arrangement also runs in the other direction. Singapore Gulf Bank will gain access to digital asset liquidity through Kraken Prime, Payward's prime brokerage service, and in the coming months it will use Payward's markets to price customer trades for its clients.
The partnership arrives amid a broader push by banks and financial firms around the world to develop services that speed up settlement and extend it beyond standard business hours. A consortium that includes JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Barclays plans to launch a tokenized deposit network operated by The Clearing House in the first half of 2027, enabling 24/7 settlement. In Japan, Circle and Nomura have reportedly partnered to offer companies instant foreign exchange settlement from 2027. On Sept. 21, the Bank of Korea also unveiled a pilot project to let foreign investors settle South Korean won transactions outside regular banking hours. Several of those initiatives are slated for 2027 or remain at the pilot stage, while the Payward–SGB integration is already in operation for its initial group of institutions.
For Payward, the deal marks a further step in its push to deepen institutional offerings around the Kraken exchange. In a related development, Nasdaq reportedly invested $100 million in Kraken's parent company at a $21 billion valuation, according to an earlier report.
