Kraken Parent Payward Signs Deal to Buy Lithuanian Bank Saldo, Closing in 2027

Payward Signs Definitive Agreement

Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Saldo Finance Oy, the Finnish holding company behind Lithuania-licensed Saldo Bank. Payward announced the deal on October 14 and expects it to close during 2027, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. The purchase price was not disclosed.

The agreement hands Payward an existing EU banking institution rather than a license application in progress. Saldo Bank UAB received a specialized banking license from the European Central Bank in October 2021 and is supervised by the Bank of Lithuania. The bank operates in Lithuania, Finland, Sweden and Germany, with additional authorization to extend into the Netherlands. Its book includes retail term deposits in all four markets, consumer lending in Lithuania, Finland and Sweden, and loans to small and medium-sized enterprises in Lithuania and Finland. A credit card service is live in Finland, with a Swedish rollout expected in 2027.

Payward intends to build on that footprint with interest-bearing deposits, secured and unsecured business loans, consumer credit and payment cards, alongside access to the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), the network that settles euro transfers between participating banks. Saldo also runs banking-as-a-service partnerships in Finland and Germany that let other fintech firms plug lending products into their own applications, infrastructure Payward expects to repurpose for its own business clients. Payward confirmed the signing in an official post on X, adding that an EU banking license meaningfully expands its Payward Banking unit.

@Payward · X post

Official post on X.

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Jarkko Mäensivu, president of Saldo Bank, said the acquisition connects the lender's established operations with Payward's regulated financial infrastructure. “A banking license is only as valuable as what you build on top of it,” he said in the announcement. The company has not said when Saldo's products will reach Kraken customers or which countries will receive them first.

Kraken's Banking Push on Two Continents

The Financial Times, which first reported the transaction, describes Payward as the first digital asset company to buy a bank in Europe. Co-CEO Arjun Sethi framed the purchase around customer demand, saying users keep asking for offerings similar to what a traditional bank provides. The stated plan is to bring cash, crypto, tokenized stocks and credit into a single system so customers can borrow and lend against their assets without selling them.

The acquisition sits alongside regulated infrastructure Payward has already assembled in the United States. Kraken Financial, the group's Wyoming-chartered banking institution, holds a limited-purpose Federal Reserve master account approved in March 2026, and the group operates an electronic money institution license from the Central Bank of Ireland. Payward says its existing operations have originated more than $2 billion in loans. On May 8, the company applied to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust charter for Payward National Trust Company, which would provide regulated custody and fiduciary services for digital assets. A trust charter, unlike a banking license, does not permit deposit-taking, and custody of digital assets ultimately reduces to controlling the private keys that secure customer holdings.

That US charter path is contested. Coinbase and Ripple have received conditional OCC approval for similar charters, and this month the Independent Community Bankers of America sued the regulator, arguing that granting charters to crypto firms exceeds its authority. Against that backdrop, buying an existing EU lender delivers deposit-taking and lending powers that a US trust charter cannot.

Saldo is also the third sizable acquisition in Payward's recent run: $550 million for derivatives venue Bitnomial in April and $600 million for Asian stablecoin payments firm Reap Technologies in May. Kraken filed confidentially for an IPO last November and has since pushed the listing back to the second quarter of 2027 at the earliest. In June 2025, the exchange secured MiCA authorization through the Central Bank of Ireland, opening regulated spot trading and related services across the European Economic Area, on top of a crypto futures business run through a Cyprus-based investment firm under EU securities rules.

An Undisclosed Price, a 2027 Close

Read together, the deal terms and the company's regulatory record point to a sequencing choice: rather than wait for a US trust charter that community bankers are now challenging in court, Payward is buying a European license that already exists. A Lithuanian banking authorization lets the group take deposits and write loans across the EU after closing, functions the OCC trust model explicitly excludes. What stays open is execution. The price is undisclosed, no product timetable has been published, and the 2027 close falls in the same window as Kraken's delayed IPO. Whether the banking integration lands before that listing is the next milestone to watch.