By Arjun Sethi, Kraken co-CEO
Kraken was based 15 years in the past as a high-performance crypto trade constructed for skilled merchants. From the start, the corporate targeted on deep liquidity, dependable execution, and infrastructure able to working via excessive market volatility.
That working philosophy formed how the enterprise developed from trade to monetary infrastructure. Somewhat than increasing by layering unbiased merchandise or methods, Kraken invested in shared infrastructure: unified liquidity, centralized danger administration, and a world compliance framework that would help a number of asset lessons and shopper segments concurrently.
Over time, this strategy remodeled the corporate from a single-product trade right into a multi-business monetary platform spanning buying and selling, custody, funds, yield, lending, and market knowledge throughout each digital and conventional property.
At the moment, Kraken is not a single-brand firm. It’s a part of a broader monetary group constructed on one unified infrastructure layer.
Introducing Payward; studying from the good infrastructure platforms
There’s a well-established sample within the historical past of tolerating platform firms. Probably the most sturdy firms didn’t scale by forcing each buyer right into a single interface or expertise. They scaled by constructing a shared infrastructure layer that enabled a number of merchandise to exist independently whereas compounding worth on the system degree.
After World Warfare II, industrial and monetary leaders realized that effectivity and resilience got here from standardization beneath, not uniformity on the floor. As markets globalized and buyer wants diverged, a profitable mannequin turned shared infrastructure with differentiated distribution.
Trendy expertise firms adopted the identical arc.
Amazon started as a retail market, however its long-term benefit got here from constructing logistics, achievement, and computing infrastructure that could possibly be reused throughout many companies. AWS was not created as a characteristic. It was created as a platform with near-zero marginal price to serve further workloads as soon as the core system was in place.
Alphabet developed by separating core infrastructure from product expression. Search, YouTube, Android, and Cloud all run on shared knowledge, compute, and identification layers, permitting innovation on the edge with out fragmentation on the core.
Meta constructed a household of merchandise on a single identification, knowledge, and monetization graph. Fb, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger serve completely different person behaviors, geographies, and use instances, but compound engagement and economics as a result of they share the identical underlying methods.
Payward follows this identical mannequin in monetary companies.
Why Payward exists
Payward is the unified infrastructure layer that powers Kraken and a rising household of merchandise, together with NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, and future platforms but to be launched.
Somewhat than forcing all customers right into a single “Frankenstein” interface, Payward permits every product to be designed for a selected buyer section, regulatory regime, and use case, whereas sharing:
- One world liquidity pool
- One danger and margin engine
- One collateral and settlement system
- One compliance and licensing framework
This strategy is not only cleaner from a product standpoint. We imagine it’s mathematically superior.
As soon as the infrastructure is constructed, the marginal price of launching and working further merchandise approaches zero relative to the worth they add. Every new floor will increase complete throughput, property on platform, and liquidity depth with out duplicating danger, capital, or regulatory effort.
Serving a segmented world market
Monetary companies are inherently segmented. Retail shoppers, skilled merchants, establishments, enterprises, and regional markets all require completely different interfaces, workflows, and regulatory therapies.
Attempting to serve all of them via a single UI degrades the expertise for everybody.
Payward’s mannequin permits Kraken to fulfill clients the place they’re:
- Shopper merchandise optimized for simplicity and belief
- Professional platforms optimized for execution and management
- Institutional choices optimized for scale, reporting, and governance
- Area-specific merchandise tailor-made to native cost rails and laws
All of this operates on the identical world system, throughout greater than 190 international locations and territories and over 100 licenses.
We imagine this allows progress by decreasing friction, rising capital effectivity, and increasing entry to trendy monetary infrastructure.
The strategic final result
By separating infrastructure from product expression, Payward ensures that innovation doesn’t come on the expense of management, danger self-discipline, or regulatory integrity.
Because the world of monetary companies continues to fragment by geography, regulation, and person conduct, we imagine this mannequin permits Kraken to scale responsibly, launch sooner, and compound worth on the platform degree.
Payward just isn’t a holding firm in title solely. It’s the system that permits Kraken to behave like infrastructure quite than an app.
Payward is the mum or dad entity and working platform that powers Kraken and an increasing household of complementary merchandise.
The title Payward, chosen on the firm’s founding, displays a long-standing dedication to shifting finance ahead towards a extra open, environment friendly, and globally accessible monetary system. Traditionally, Payward operated largely behind the scenes because the authorized and technical basis of Kraken.
Starting in 2025, Payward has taken on a extra express position because the infrastructure layer that powers a number of product surfaces and interfaces.
Payward’s platform spans:
- Excessive-performance trade expertise
- Deeply pooled world liquidity
- Unified danger and margin methods
- Shared compliance and regulatory infrastructure
- A broad portfolio of licenses throughout crypto, funds, buying and selling, and custody
This superinfrastructure permits Payward to launch and function distinct merchandise quickly, at low marginal price, whereas compounding liquidity, property on platform, and engagement throughout your entire ecosystem.
Kraken stays the flagship multi-asset platform, however Payward’s infrastructure additionally powers:
- NinjaTrader, a number one retail futures platform
- CF Benchmarks, a world index and reference knowledge supplier
- Breakout, a crypto-native proprietary buying and selling and analysis platform
- xStocks, a world tokenized equities platform
Payward supplies a consolidated view of the platform that underpins all of those merchandise. Kraken just isn’t going away. It stays the first client and institutional model. Going ahead, ecosystem-wide bulletins and platform updates might be communicated via www.payward.com.
Product and platform enlargement in 2025
This was a yr outlined not simply by enlargement, however by execution. We shipped throughout your entire product suite – launching, scaling, and integrating at a tempo that mirrored each operational maturity and long-term conviction. Progress was fueled by robust core product momentum and significant contributions from latest acquisitions. Over the course of the yr, we enhanced our core experiences, launched fully new interfaces, expanded our attain via new geos, asset lessons, licensing, and extra.
Shopper
Payward expanded its client footprint with merchandise designed to develop property on platform and prolong on a regular basis monetary use instances:
- Krak App and Krak Card, a world cash app for funds, financial savings, and spending, launched in partnership with Mastercard
- Kraken+, a premium subscription providing
- Bundles, enabling simplified portfolio diversification
Skilled merchants
- Kraken VIP, a high-touch service mannequin for ultra-high-net-worth purchasers
- Kraken Professional reached baseline round-trip latencies under 2ms for the primary time with VPC peering with AWS and DC3 with Beeks.
- Launched new Github REST and WebSocket SDKs for spot and futures to enhance developer and integration expertise.
- Launched FIX API for each spot and futures buying and selling, enabling strong and standardized connectivity for the biggest establishments and intermediaries.
- Kraken Professional launched Unified Pockets to consolidate spot, margin, and futures balances for cross margining for capital effectivity.
- Elevated leverage for margin buying and selling as much as 10x for bigger publicity and dynamic charges to higher value merchandise throughout unstable markets.
- Launched Kraken Market Participation Program to incentivize exercise from buying and selling companies.
- New order sorts with OCO and FOK for extra order customization.
- NinjaTrader launched NinjaTrader Prop and Tradovate Prop, giving merchants a toolkit for each stage of their prop journey
Institutional and B2B
Payward prolonged its infrastructure into institutional and embedded finance use instances:
Geographic and enlargement and new asset lessons
Regulatory and coverage management
Payward continued to construct one of many {industry}’s most complete regulatory footprints:
- Secured MiCA approval from the Central Financial institution of Eire
- Obtained a MiFID license within the EU
- Secured an EMI license within the UK
- Actively engaged with policymakers, regulators and {industry} stakeholders internationally to help the creation of sturdy regulatory frameworks
This regulatory basis allows Payward to help a number of asset lessons and shopper segments inside native frameworks whereas working on a shared world platform.
M&A and strategic progress
In 2025, Payward executed a disciplined M&A technique targeted on finishing and increasing its infrastructure:
- NinjaTrader, accelerating Payward’s evolution right into a multi-asset, skilled buying and selling platform
- Breakout, enabling evaluation-based proprietary buying and selling and capital entry
- Small Change, enhancing Payward’s U.S. derivatives infrastructure underneath CFTC regulation
- Capitalise.ai, enabling no-code buying and selling automation
In January 2026, Payward closed the acquisition of Backed, totally verticalizing the xStocks platform by integrating issuance, buying and selling, and settlement right into a single system.
Monetary efficiency
2025 established a brand new baseline for Payward’s scale and earnings energy. Adjusted income reached $2.2 billion, representing 33% year-over-year progress, pushed by broad-based efficiency throughout buying and selling and asset-based companies.
Adjusted EBITDA totaled $531 million, up 26% year-over-year, reflecting significant working leverage inherent within the unified platform.
Income was properly balanced, with roughly 47% from trading-based income and 53% from asset-based and different income. Buying and selling income was supported by deep liquidity and sustained engagement, whereas asset-based income scaled with property on platform via custody, yield, funds, and financing.
Whole platform transaction quantity reached $2.0 trillion, up 34% year-over-year. Belongings on platform elevated to $48.2 billion, up 11% year-over-year. Funded accounts grew to five.7 million, a 50% enhance versus 2024. Futures DARTs rose 119%, pushed by NinjaTrader and Breakout integration and expanded futures choices.
This fall 2025 resilience
This fall 2025 demonstrated the resilience of Payward’s infrastructure throughout heightened volatility. Regardless of industry-wide softness, the platform generated $625 million in adjusted income and $84 million in adjusted EBITDA.
Throughout October’s historic liquidation occasion, wherein greater than $19 billion in leveraged positions had been liquidated throughout the {industry} in roughly 24 hours, Payward’s platform operated with out disruption. Execution high quality, danger methods, and liquidity held up exactly as designed.
Transparency via Proof of Reserves
Payward accomplished its newest quarterly Proof of Reserves as of December 31, 2025. Shoppers can independently confirm that their property are totally backed on-chain and included within the report, which is validated by a third-party accounting agency.
Kraken pioneered common Proof of Reserves and stays one of many few platforms to conduct this course of persistently.
Trying forward
Payward enters the following part of its evolution with a transparent goal: to extend throughput on a unified world monetary infrastructure whereas preserving the chance, belief, and regulatory invariants that outline the platform.
The corporate’s technique just isn’t pushed by including standalone merchandise or chasing short-term cycles. It’s pushed by compounding effectivity throughout a single system. As property on platform develop, collateral turns into extra productive. As liquidity deepens, buying and selling quantity scales with out requiring increased take charges. As settlement, custody, and funds converge on the identical rails, new asset lessons will be launched with out fragmenting danger or operations.
In sensible phrases, we imagine the following part of progress will come from three reinforcing vectors.
First, increasing the set of property that may function natively on the platform. Crypto was the primary asset class to maneuver onto programmable, always-on rails. Tokenized equities, FX, futures, and real-world property prolong that very same infrastructure into bigger, extra sturdy markets. As a result of Payward’s structure is asset-agnostic, these additions enhance platform throughput quite than complexity.
Second, rising the productiveness and period of property on platform. Custody, funds, yield, financing, and settlement exercise enable balances to help a number of financial makes use of over time. This improves capital effectivity and drives a rising share of asset-based income that’s much less delicate to buying and selling volatility.
Third, world enlargement that’s additive quite than extractive. Payward just isn’t replicating infrastructure market by market. A single world core helps localized onramps, compliance, and distribution. As adoption accelerates in areas the place legacy monetary rails are inefficient, the identical platform allows new monetary exercise with out requiring incremental reinvention.
Threat administration stays central to this technique. Margin will proceed to be designed as a security mechanism quite than a income lever. Positions stay totally collateralized, liquidation stays deterministic, and the platform will proceed to prioritize predictable conduct underneath stress over peak-cycle optimization.
Trying ahead, Payward’s focus just isn’t on maximizing any single metric in isolation. It’s on maximizing long-run, risk-adjusted throughput throughout a rising set of asset lessons and geographies. The monetary leads to 2025 replicate the early levels of this compounding mannequin. The years forward are about scaling it responsibly.
Non-GAAP metrics
Adjusted Income and Adjusted EBITDA are non-GAAP monetary measures utilized by Administration internally to grasp, handle, and consider the enterprise and make working choices. We imagine these measures present further perception into our operational efficiency and assist facilitate comparisons for the interval indicated. Adjusted income is complete income in accordance with GAAP, much less (i) buying and selling prices and (ii) (Acquire) loss on buying and selling actions. We imagine Adjusted Income permits for higher comparability to look exchanges. Adjusted EBITDA is internet earnings (loss), adjusted to exclude (i) different earnings (loss), internet and different non-recurring objects, (ii) (acquire) loss on crypto, internet, (iii) earnings tax expense, (iv) curiosity expense from financing actions, (v) depreciation and amortization, (vi) stock-based compensation expense, (vii) restructuring prices, (viii) transaction-related prices and (ix) non-recurring authorized settlements. Adjusted EBITDA excludes irregular, non-recurring, and/or discretionary bills and is meant to offer a clearer view of the corporate’s core profitability. Introduced metrics embody NinjaTrader ranging from Might 1, 2025 onward and Breakout from September 2025 onward. Prior durations have been revised to evolve to present interval presentation.
Key working metrics
Whole Platform Transaction Quantity: Whole platform transaction quantity represents the mixture notional worth, expressed in U.S. greenback phrases, of all transactions executed throughout the Firm’s platforms through the interval introduced. This consists of transaction exercise in Spot, Margin, Shopper, OTC Spot, Equities, xStocks, Krak, Earn and Funding (throughout all platforms).
Belongings on Platform (finish of interval): Whole property on platform represents the mixture worth, expressed in U.S. greenback phrases, of property held by the Firm’s clients throughout all merchandise and asset sorts, together with crypto property, equities and fiat currencies, measured as of the final day of the fiscal quarter. This metric consists of property held on the Firm’s platforms in addition to property held via affiliated platforms, together with NinjaTrader.
Funded Accounts (finish of interval): Funded accounts characterize the full variety of distinct buyer accounts throughout the Firm’s platforms and merchandise that maintained a stability higher than zero as of the final day of the fiscal quarter. Sub-accounts are counted as separate accounts for functions of this metric. Whole funded accounts embody accounts held via affiliated platforms, together with NinjaTrader.
Futures Every day Common Income Trades (DARTs): Futures DARTs represents day by day common income trades throughout TradFi futures and perpetual crypto futures, calculated as: complete variety of futures trades/buying and selling days.
Buying and selling days: Buying and selling days are calculated as the full variety of calendar days within the quarter.
The knowledge offered on this communications is for informational functions solely and doesn’t represent a proposal, solicitation, or advice to purchase or promote any token, safety or monetary instrument. It’s not meant as, and shall not be relied upon as, funding, monetary, authorized or tax recommendation. Previous efficiency just isn’t essentially indicative of future outcomes.
