[REVISION HISTORY]

Payward expansion into tokenized equities and financial tech

Updated 4 times since CLSTR started tracking revisions of this situation.

What changed

2026-09-26 15:01 UTC → 2026-09-27 22:25 UTC · added ~~removed~~

Payward, the parent company of the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange, is expanding its efforts to develop infrastructure for tokenized equities through strategic partnerships. Initially, the London Stock Exchange announced a partnership with Payward to tokenize the 100 largest companies listed in London. These assets, referred to as ‘xStocks’, are designed to be backed 1:1 by underlying shares to provide 24/7 trading access to international investors, though they do not grant traditional shareholder rights. Following this, Nasdaq Ventures invested $100 million in Payward to support the development of Nasdaq Equity Tokens (NETs). This collaboration focuses on creating blockchain-based representations of publicly traded securities, with an expected market availability in the second quarter of 2027. Unlike xStocks, NETs are designed to provide holders with actual shareholder rights, including voting and governance protections. Expanding its ecosystem, Payward has partnered with Ledger to integrate xStocks into the Ledger Wallet, allowing eligible users to trade hundreds of tokenized U.S. and international equities through a self-custody model. Payward reported that xStocks has already surpassed $42 billion in total transaction volume, though the assets remain unavailable to U.S. persons. By late 2026, Payward began investing billions to transform into a unified financial infrastructure platform centered on a single ledger system. This strategy includes the $1.5 billion acquisition of NinjaTrader to establish a U.S. futures brokerage and a $550 million acquisition of Bitnomial for regulated clearinghouse and futures infrastructure. The company is also reportedly preparing to acquire a European bank. While Payward submitted a confidential IPO application in November 2025, it does not expect to list before the second quarter of 2027. As of late 2026, Payward has organized its operations into four pillars: Kraken trading, banking, asset management, and Payward Services, which provides institutional infrastructure to external clients.

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