Payward Adds 24/7 Dollar Settlement for Bitcoin (BTC) Markets via SGB Net

Payward Switches On 24/7 Dollar Settlement

Bitcoin (BTC) price action and every other crypto market keep running through weekends, yet the dollars funding those trades have traditionally waited at the bank counter. Payward, the financial infrastructure company behind the Kraken exchange, moved to remove that bottleneck on Sunday, October 4, announcing a partnership with Singapore Gulf Bank that lets institutional clients settle qualifying digital-asset transactions at any hour and put deposited cash to work immediately, even on a non-banking day.

The integration connects Payward to SGB Net, the Bahrain-regulated bank's real-time clearing network. Deposits made through the network become available to trade at once, instead of sitting through standard cut-off windows and multi-day bank settlement. Under the initial rollout, the service supports US dollar transactions for a select group of clients in eligible Asian and Gulf jurisdictions, according to the companies' joint press release, which states both sides plan to add more clients and currencies over time.

Mark Greenberg, Payward's chief commercial officer, said the deal targets a structural problem: crypto markets trade around the clock while settlement does not. In his framing, exchanges, payment providers, over-the-counter desks and fintechs all hit the same constraint, where the money stops moving when the business day ends but the market does not.

For traders, the practical effect is speed. A desk that receives dollars through SGB Net can deploy them into spot orders or crypto futures the moment they land, without waiting for the next banking day and without chasing a fast-moving market late. Payward did not disclose how many clients are in the first wave or the volumes expected through the network. The company has been expanding beyond the exchange business itself, and the partnership follows reports last week that BNY is in talks with Payward over a potential tie-up spanning digital assets, custody, trading and payments.

SGB Net Clears $20 Billion a Month

The network at the center of the deal is not a pilot. SGB Net launched in 2025 and now processes more than $20 billion in fiat transactions every month, a figure that comes from the bank's own disclosure. That scale matters for the second half of the arrangement: Singapore Gulf Bank will access digital-asset liquidity through Kraken Prime, Payward's prime brokerage service, and will use Payward's markets to price customer trades in the coming months, per the joint announcement.

The tie-up lands in a market where settlement speed has become a competitive front. A consortium that includes JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Barclays plans to launch a tokenized deposit network operated by The Clearing House in the first half of 2027, built to clear payments around the clock. In Japan, Circle and Nomura are reportedly preparing instant foreign-exchange settlement for companies starting in 2027. The Bank of Korea, for its part, unveiled a pilot project on September 21 to let foreign investors settle won transactions outside regular banking hours.

Established banks and crypto-native firms are converging on the same conclusion, that the gap between trading hours and banking hours is now a product decision rather than a fact of life. Payward's version connects a regulated Gulf bank directly to prime-brokerage liquidity, so an institutional client can move cash and trade without waiting for the next business day. Timing also matters for leveraged books, whose perpetual futures positions can demand margin on a Saturday, when a traditional wire would simply wait. The custody question sits close to that build-out: institutions weighing a venue's managed arrangement against holding their own private key now have one more variable, since Payward controls the trading, custody, payments and banking layers together. Neither company has said when the service widens beyond dollars, beyond the stated plan to add currencies over time.

The Real Test Comes With New Currencies

The threads of the past 24 hours point one way: institutional crypto desks increasingly expect cash to move like the assets they trade. The friction lands hardest on leveraged books, where a funding rate settlement or a margin call never pauses for a bank holiday, but a wire transfer still does. COINOTAG's read of the joint announcement: the scope is confirmed for dollars and named jurisdictions, while client count, transaction volumes and fee terms were not disclosed. The $20 billion monthly figure is the bank's own, and independent usage data has yet to surface. The real test will be the promised expansion to more clients and currencies, and whether rivals' 2027 projects arrive before Payward's rails become standard.