Kraken parent Payward agrees to buy Lithuania's Saldo Bank in EU lending push

Payward, the company behind crypto exchange Kraken, has agreed to buy Lithuania's Saldo Bank, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday — a move that would give the exchange group a fully licensed bank inside the European Union. The FT described Payward as the first digital-asset company to acquire a bank in Europe.

What Payward is buying

Saldo Bank obtained its EU banking licence in 2021. It offers consumer and business loans as well as term deposits. Financial terms were not disclosed, and the acquisition still needs regulatory approval, with completion expected in 2027.

Co-CEO Arjun Sethi told the FT that customers have been asking for the kind of products they would normally get from a bank. The goal, he said, is to combine cash, crypto, tokenized stocks and credit in a single system so that users can borrow and lend against their holdings without selling them. Lending and card issuing are expected to be the first products.

Part of a buying spree

The bank deal extends a run of acquisitions:

• April: derivatives exchange Bitnomial, for about $550 million.
• May: Asian stablecoin-payments firm Reap Technologies, for about $600 million.
• May: Payward also applied to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust charter.

Kraken filed confidentially for an IPO last November, but CoinDesk reported in September that the listing has been pushed back to the second quarter of 2027 at the earliest.

The bigger picture

Crypto firms are pushing deeper into regulated banking on both sides of the Atlantic. In the U.S., several have won conditional approval for trust charters, which let them hold client assets but not take deposits. That trend is contested: this month the Independent Community Bankers of America sued the OCC, arguing that granting such charters to crypto companies exceeds the regulator's authority.

If you keep funds on any exchange, our guide on how to store crypto safely explains the trade-offs between custodial accounts and self-custody.