In brief
- BNY is in talks with Kraken’s parent company Payward about a broad partnership, CoinDesk reports, citing two people familiar with the matter.
- A deal could cover crypto products, custody, trading, payments, wealth management and infrastructure.
- Neither company has confirmed the talks; both declined to comment, and there is no guarantee of a deal.
Custody bank BNY is in talks with Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, about a partnership spanning digital assets and financial-market infrastructure, CoinDesk reported on Sept. 30, citing two people familiar with the matter. Both companies declined to comment, and neither has published a statement. The talks are unconfirmed and could end without a deal.
What is reportedly on the table
According to CoinDesk’s sources, a deal could cover crypto products, custody, wealth management, trading, payments and infrastructure. These would come through Payward Services, its business-to-business arm for banks, exchanges and asset managers. One source said parts of it could resemble the infrastructure side of Payward’s recent deal with Nasdaq.
That deal, announced in September, has Nasdaq Ventures investing $100 million in Payward at a $21 billion valuation, with the two firms building tokenized stocks they expect to launch in the second quarter of 2027, crypto.news reports.
What each side brings
BNY, formerly Bank of New York Mellon, provides custody, asset servicing, clearing and wealth management to institutional clients. In January it took a first step toward tokenized deposits, creating on-chain records that mirror clients’ deposit balances on its private, permissioned blockchain, starting with collateral and margin.
Payward has grown well beyond the Kraken exchange. It agreed to buy derivatives firm Bitnomial for up to $550 million and stablecoin payments company Reap for $600 million, after buying retail futures platform NinjaTrader for about $1.5 billion in 2025, CoinDesk reports. It has pushed back its planned IPO to the second quarter of 2027 at the earliest.
Why it matters
A partnership would give a custody banking giant access to a crypto firm’s trading and custody tools, rather than building them alone. It would also fit a wider pattern of large banks adding crypto services. Other lenders are taking similar steps, from Absa offering bitcoin custody to Morgan Stanley’s digital asset lab.
Next to watch: whether BNY or Payward confirms the talks, and what a final agreement would cover.
