Kraken parent Payward to buy stablecoin payments firm Reap for $600m, deepens Asia push

Kraken’s parent company Payward agreed on Wednesday to buy Reap Technologies, a Hong Kong-based stablecoin payments firm, for up to $600 million in cash and stock. It is the largest acquisition Payward has done, and the first time the exchange has spent serious capital on Asian payments infrastructure.

Bloomberg first reported the deal. The equity portion will be issued at a $20 billion valuation, Payward co-chief executive Arjun Sethi said. Closing is targeted for the second half of 2026, pending the usual regulatory approvals.

Reap was started in Hong Kong in 2018 by Daren Guo, who previously ran Stripe’s Asia-Pacific business, and Kevin Kang, a former investment banker. The company sells stablecoin-rail plumbing to corporates: cross-border settlement, treasury services, and card issuing tied to USDC. It is profitable, has raised about $60 million in venture funding, and operates in Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico.

What Payward is buying

Reap nearly tripled both revenue and payment volumes during 2025, the companies said at announcement, on the back of a stablecoin card-payment market now running above $18 billion a year. The product fits a use case institutions actually pay for. Treasurers paying suppliers in dollars without correspondent-banking fees. Companies issuing cards that draw on stablecoin balances. Payment processors routing through a regulated rail.

That is what Payward is buying. Sethi was direct about why.

“Finance is moving in one direction. Continuous markets. Programmable money. Autonomous execution. Stablecoins are the settlement substrate. AI agents are the new participants,” he said.

Guo, who will stay on, framed it in market terms. “Stablecoins in card payments are one of the largest real-world applications today, and Reap is proud to be leading the way,” he said.

Why now

The Reap deal lands in the middle of a heavy stretch for Payward. In March 2026, Kraken became the first crypto firm to obtain a Federal Reserve master account, plugging its banking arm directly into US payment systems via the Kansas City branch. In April, it agreed to buy derivatives venue Bitnomial for up to $550 million. The same month, Deutsche Boerse paid $200 million for a roughly 1.5 per cent fully diluted stake at a $13.3 billion valuation, a discount of about a third to the $20 billion mark Payward set in November when it raised $800 million.

Sethi told Consensus Miami on May 5 that Payward is “about 80 per cent ready” to go public, having filed a confidential S-1 earlier in the year. The Reap acquisition fits the IPO pitch. Payward wants to be sold to public investors not as a spot crypto exchange but as a financial-infrastructure company that clears digital assets, with banking access, derivatives, Nasdaq tokenisation tie-ups, and now stablecoin payments rails on the same balance sheet.

Where it puts Kraken in stablecoins

There is also a defensive element. Kraken, like every large exchange, has leaned heavily on Circle’s USDC and Tether’s USDT for the dollar leg of most trades. Buying a business that originates stablecoin flows directly, rather than just routing them, closes part of that gap. Coinbase has a revenue-share with Circle. Binance has built BFUSD and FDUSD as in-house alternatives. Owning Reap puts Payward closer to that level of vertical integration.

The Asia angle is the second piece. Reap is headquartered in Hong Kong, has pushed into Singapore and Mexico, and last November expanded into a 10,014 square-foot Quarry Bay office. That gives Payward a regulated base in the city as the Securities and Futures Commission finalises rules for stablecoin issuers under the ordinance that took effect in 2025.

What’s next

The deal still has to clear regulators in multiple jurisdictions. The second-half close gives Payward time to work through Hong Kong, Singapore and any US review tied to its planned listing. Reap operates independently until then. Sethi said the team would be folded into Payward’s institutional and payments stack after closing, with Guo and Kang staying in leadership roles.

For Payward, the more interesting question is whether the package on offer to public-market investors, banking plus derivatives plus stablecoin payments, supports a valuation above $20 billion when the listing window opens. The Deutsche Boerse round in April, struck a third below the November price, suggests the market has already moved on that.