Kraken Owner Payward to Buy Lithuania's Saldo Bank in EU Push

Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, is buying Lithuania-based Saldo Bank as it expands into lending and card issuing, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

Payward is the first digital asset company to buy a bank in Europe, according to the FT. Saldo received its EU banking license in 2021 and offers consumer and business loans as well as term deposits. The price was not disclosed.

"One of the biggest things that our customers have been asking us is 'I would like to get products and services and offerings similar to what I get with another bank,'" Payward co-CEO Arjun Sethi told the FT.

Sethi said the plan is to bring cash, crypto, tokenized stocks and credit together in a single system, so customers can borrow and lend against their assets without selling them.

Crypto charters in the U.S.

The San Francisco-based company, founded in 2011, applied in May for a national trust company charter from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the federal bank regulator. Coinbase and Ripple are among the crypto firms that have received conditional approval for such charters, which let them hold customers' assets and provide transaction services but not take deposits.

This month, the Independent Community Bankers of America sued the OCC, arguing that granting such charters to crypto firms exceeds the regulator's authority. "Any non-fiduciary firm seeking the benefits of a federal bank charter should meet the same standards as community banks," ICBA President and CEO Rebecca Romero Rainey said in a statement. An OCC spokesperson declined to comment.

The bank deal follows Payward's $550 million acquisition of derivatives exchange Bitnomial in April and its $600 million purchase of Asian stablecoin payments firm Reap Technologies in May. Kraken filed confidentially for an IPO last November, but has since pushed the listing back to the second quarter of 2027 at the earliest, CoinDesk reported in September, citing people familiar with the matter.

The Saldo acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to close in 2027.