Kraken parent company Payward is in talks with BNY over a possible partnership that could cover crypto custody, trading, payments and other financial services.
Two people familiar with the discussions said the potential partnership could involve six areas: crypto products, custody, wealth management, trading, payments and financial infrastructure.
The talks are still ongoing, and there is no guarantee that the two companies will reach an agreement.
Some of the discussions could involve Payward Services, the Wyoming-based company’s business-to-business platform that provides financial infrastructure to banks, exchanges and asset managers.
Payward’s platform supports services connected to Kraken and its other businesses, including spot crypto trading, derivatives, tokenized equities, custody, staking, payments and traditional securities.
BNY, formerly known as Bank of New York Mellon, provides custody, asset servicing, clearing and wealth management services to institutional clients.
The discussions come shortly after Nasdaq Ventures agreed to invest $100 million in Payward. The deal, announced in September, reportedly valued Payward at around $21 billion.
The Nasdaq agreement also includes cooperation on tokenized equities and market surveillance.
Nasdaq said Payward will use its surveillance technology across crypto, equities, tokenized equities, futures and options markets.
The companies are also working on Nasdaq Equity Tokens, which are expected to launch in the second quarter of 2027. The project is expected to cover distribution, trading and post-trade services and connect with Payward’s xStocks ecosystem.
Nasdaq said the planned tokenized shares will maintain investor protections and issuer rights.
BNY has also been developing its own blockchain-based financial infrastructure.
In January, the bank announced the first stage of its deposit-tokenization program. The system creates blockchain records that represent participating clients’ existing deposit balances.
The initial focus is on collateral and margin operations. BNY said the digital records represent clients’ existing claims against the bank, while the balances remain in its traditional banking records for regulatory and reporting purposes.
The system operates on a private blockchain and remains under BNY’s existing risk, compliance and control systems.
The bank said the longer-term goal is to enable rules-based and near-real-time movement of institutional cash.
Payward has also expanded its business through several acquisitions.
In May, the company completed its acquisition of Bitnomial, adding regulated U.S. derivatives infrastructure to its operations. Bitnomial operates a designated contract market, derivatives clearing organization and futures commission merchant under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission framework.
Payward said it planned to connect this infrastructure with Kraken, NinjaTrader and Payward Services so banks, brokerages and payment companies could access regulated U.S. crypto derivatives through a single integration.
Payward also acquired futures trading platform NinjaTrader for about $1.5 billion in 2025.
The company completed another major deal with Reap, a stablecoin payments business, in July. The transaction had previously been announced at $600 million.
Payward reported $508 million in adjusted revenue for the second quarter, up 17% from a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA was $23 million, while platform transaction volume fell 18% to $310 billion.
In July, Payward also agreed to acquire Magic Labs’ wallet business through an asset purchase. The technology had supported more than 60 million wallets and more than $10 billion in stablecoin volume.
Together, these moves have expanded Payward’s operations beyond its traditional crypto exchange business and into derivatives, payments, custody, wallets and financial infrastructure.
The potential BNY partnership would add another major institutional banking relationship, but the discussions remain preliminary and may not result in a completed deal.
