Broadridge and Payward Services to Give xStocks Holders a Governance Voice

Broadridge Financial Solutions has agreed to support shareholder communications and proxy voting for eligible holders of xStocks, the tokenised equities product developed by Payward Services. The arrangement, announced Thursday, is designed to close one of the clearest gaps between tokenised equities and traditional share ownership.

Through Broadridge's unified governance platform, eligible xStocks holders will be able to submit voting preferences on the underlying shares that back their token positions. The move gives token holders a governance voice comparable to that of conventional shareholders.

Payward Services is the B2B infrastructure arm of Payward, the parent company of digital asset platform Kraken. The platform currently offers more than 500 tokenised assets, spanning equities, ETFs and pre-IPO instruments, with tokenised equities from several international markets expected to follow.

Mark Greenberg, Payward's chief commercial officer and global head of Payward Services, said the endgame for tokenisation was not just building faster programmable capital markets, but also giving people worldwide everything that comes with owning part of a company, including a voice in how it is run. Doug DeSchutter, president of Broadridge's Investor Communication Solutions business, said investors should not have to choose between blockchain innovation and shareholder rights.

Under the arrangement, eligible holders will authenticate to ProxyVote.com using Web3 authentication, review proxy materials for the underlying securities and submit their voting preferences digitally. Broadridge said the integration brings trusted governance capabilities from traditional markets into blockchain-native ecosystems while preserving the efficiency of tokenised assets.