BNY and Kraken Parent Explore Deal Linking Digital Assets…

BNY and Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, are in preliminary talks over a potential digital asset partnership covering crypto products, custody, wealth management, trading, payments and financial-market infrastructure, according to two people familiar with the discussions. Both companies declined to comment, and there is no guarantee an agreement will be reached. The discussions could become Payward's latest bridge into traditional finance.

The proposed arrangement would center partly on Payward Services, the group's business-to-business platform for banks, exchanges, fintechs and asset managers. One person familiar with the matter said parts of the plan could resemble infrastructure work covered by Payward's recently expanded relationship with Nasdaq.

What BNY brings to the table

BNY already supplies custody, asset servicing, clearing, payments and wealth-management services to institutional clients, and has been steadily extending those businesses onto blockchain rails. In January it launched a tokenized deposit capability for institutions, creating blockchain representations of conventional demand deposits that can be used in collateral, margin and settlement workflows. The service initially involved institutions including ICE, Citadel Securities and Circle, with BNY targeting near-real-time movement of bank money between counterparties. It has since moved deeper into digital assets, including custody, stablecoin services and staking. The scope now under discussion is unusually broad: rather than a single custody or execution product, it could link asset holding, cash movement, trading and post-trade infrastructure across multiple stages of the transaction chain.

Payward's Nasdaq agreement offers the clearest template for how such a partnership might work. Nasdaq Ventures agreed in September to invest $100 million in Payward at a $21 billion valuation, while expanding collaboration on tokenized equities and market infrastructure. The two companies also agreed to deepen work on Nasdaq Equity Tokens and to deploy Nasdaq's market-surveillance technology across Payward's crypto, equities, tokenized-equities, futures and options venues. The tokens are targeted for the second quarter of 2027 and are intended to connect regulated equity markets with Payward's xStocks ecosystem while retaining issuer control, shareholder rights and conventional market protections.

Payward has spent the past two years assembling businesses beyond spot crypto trading. It acquired NinjaTrader for roughly $1.5 billion in 2025, agreed to buy Bitnomial for up to $550 million and struck a $600 million deal for stablecoin-payments company Reap. Bitnomial brought a CFTC-regulated U.S. derivatives stack, while Reap added business payments and stablecoin infrastructure.

The talks also arrive as Payward prepares for a possible public listing. The company reportedly pushed its potential IPO to the second quarter of 2027 at the earliest, though it has not publicly confirmed that timetable. The breadth and economics of any BNY partnership remain unknown until an agreement is signed.