Most crypto companies still rely heavily on banks for the boring but essential parts of finance: deposits, payments, cards and lending. Payward is taking a different route.
The company behind Kraken has agreed to acquire Saldo Finance, bringing Lithuania-licensed Saldo Bank into its infrastructure stack once regulators approve the transaction.
That gives Payward a much more direct route into European banking services. Customers could eventually move between cash, crypto, tokenized assets and credit without jumping across completely separate financial providers.
🏦 This is less about Kraken “buying a bank” for the headline and more about vertical integration.
The more infrastructure Payward controls itself, the less dependent it becomes on third parties to connect crypto with traditional money.
The deal is expected to close in 2027. BTC is trading near $83.5K. Crypto companies spent years building around banks. Now some of them are starting to become part of the banking system itself.
Bull Run 🐂