Kraken Parent Company Payward Applies for US National Trust Bank Charter

Key Insights

• Payward, Kraken’s parent company, has filed an application for a US national trust bank charter.
• The firm plans to offer federally regulated custody services as it continues to expand its regulated infrastructure.
• OCC’s response to crypto firms’ application for a national trust bank charter has been mostly positive.

Payward has applied for a national trust charter with the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The firm, which owns the Kraken exchange, announced today that it has filed an application to become a crypto bank.

With the move, Payward seeks to join multiple crypto firms that have already applied for the charter. The OCC has already granted conditional approval to more than five crypto firms.

According to the announcement, the firm plans to establish Payward National Trust Company (PNTC). They are aiming to expand their custody business once they get the charter. PNTC will offer digital assets custody services for institutional clients.

The charter, if granted, will strengthen Payward and Kraken’s regulatory stack for custody services. Kraken Financial has held a Wyoming special-purpose depository institution (SPDI) bank charter since 2020. It has also secured a Federal Reserve master account.

However, a federal bank charter carries greater significance. That could enable it to expand its services and attract more clients nationwide.

Kraken Co-CEO Arjun Sethi acknowledged this, noting that a national trust charter provides the regulatory certainty that institutions want. Such a charter “establishes the infrastructure to build the next generation of custody,” he said.

Meanwhile, the move represents another effort by Payward and Kraken to improve their regulatory compliance status. The exchange has made a series of acquisitions over the past 12 months, all aimed at expanding its regulated offerings.

These include futures trading platform NinjaTrader, acquired in 2025, and the CFTC-licensed derivatives exchange Bitnomial, acquired in April. Interestingly, it has just agreed to buy payments firm Reap Technologies, showing its vision extends beyond trading.

Kraken is reportedly planning an initial public offering. All these acquisitions are part of the long-term plan to be better positioned when it goes public. It is waiting for the market sentiment to be more positive before its IPO.

Meanwhile, the odds of Payward getting a positive response from the OCC are quite high. The OCC has already issued conditional trust charters to several crypto firms. That includes Ripple, Circle, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, Paxos, Coinbase, and Crypto.com.

However, conditional approvals are not the final step. The firms still need to meet strict conditions before they can get full approval. So far, Anchorage Digital is the only crypto bank with a full national charter.

Still, the OCC has already shown a commitment to the safe integration of digital assets into the banking sector. A few months ago, it confirmed that riskless principal digital assets transactions are a permissible activity for US national banks.

The regulator recently closed public comments on its proposed framework for implementing the GENIUS Act. It is now expected that the regulator will soon release rules governing the OCC’s supervision and regulation of stablecoin issuers.

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