Crypto exchanges have spent years building products that look like banking while sitting just outside the banking system. Payward, the parent company of Kraken, is now buying its way in.
The company said it agreed to acquire Saldo Bank, a lender based in Lithuania, for an undisclosed amount. That gets Payward a European Union banking license. According to a Financial Times report, the purchase will make Payward the first crypto firm to buy a bank in Europe.
What Payward gets with the license
A license is the point of the deal. With it, Payward can offer EU customers interest-bearing bank deposits, loans, card services and euro payments. Those are the basic products a crypto exchange usually has to rent from a partner bank.
“A regulated EU bank is the piece that lets us serve European clients the way a primary financial institution should: one place to hold assets, move them freely, and put them to work,” said Arjun Sethi, Payward’s co-CEO.
That’s the pitch. Your crypto, your savings and your card all with one provider. Whether European customers want their main bank account to sit next to a crypto exchange is a separate question, and the deal doesn’t answer it.
A small bank with a wide footprint
Saldo isn’t a big institution. It had 163.9 million euros ($180 million) in total assets at the end of 2025, up 22.7% from a year earlier, according to data from The Banks. Payward didn’t immediately say how much it’s paying.
Saldo’s value lies in where it can operate. It’s licensed in Lithuania, Finland, Sweden and Germany, and it holds a passport to operate in the Netherlands. It already offers deposits, consumer and business loans and payment services, so Payward is buying an existing operation instead of starting from zero.
This has been in the works for a while
None of this came out of nowhere. Kraken was reported in July to be seeking a banking license in Lithuania. Buying a bank that already has one is the faster route.
Payward is running a similar play in the U.S. There, it has applied for a national trust bank charter, and its banking arm secured limited access to the Federal Reserve’s payment system. Payward said its banking business has already originated more than $2 billion in loans and holds a Federal Reserve limited-purpose master account and an electronic money institution license in Ireland.
The broader trend is clear. Crypto firms increasingly compete with traditional lenders, and owning a regulated bank is the most direct way to do that.
Don’t expect a Kraken savings account soon
The deal still needs regulatory approval and is expected to close in 2027. That’s at least a year of review before any European customer can open an interest-bearing deposit account backed by a Kraken-owned bank.
If you’re a Kraken user in Germany or the Netherlands hoping to move your paycheck over, plan around that 2027 date and nothing earlier.
