Kraken Parent Payward Files for OCC National Trust Bank Charter

Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, filed an application Friday with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust company charter. The proposed entity, Payward National Trust Company, would provide federally regulated digital-asset custody services to institutional clients nationwide.

Payward Co-CEO Arjun Sethi described the move as part of a broader regulated-banking strategy. “Our long-held belief has always been that the right path forward for digital assets runs through robust, transparent regulation,” Sethi said in a company blog post. The trust charter would not authorize lending or deposit-taking, but would give Kraken a qualified-custodian designation that many institutional allocators require.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

The OCC application complements Kraken Financial, the firm’s existing Wyoming-chartered Special Purpose Depository Institution, which already holds a Federal Reserve master account. Sethi called the two entities “complementary pillars” of Payward’s banking ambitions.

Kraken joins a wave of crypto firms pursuing federal bank charters. Coinbase secured conditional OCC approval in April, following December approvals for Circle, Ripple, BitGo, Paxos, and Fidelity Digital Assets. Crypto.com filed for its own OCC charter in late October.

The filing lands in the middle of an aggressive expansion. This week Kraken agreed to acquire stablecoin firm Reap Technologies for $600 million, following last month’s $550 million purchase of derivatives exchange Bitnomial. The company also confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO in November after raising $800 million at a $20 billion valuation.