Kraken Parent Payward Files for Federal Trust Charter, Joining Growing Queue of Crypto Firms Seeking OCC Approval
Payward, Inc., the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, filed an application on May 8 with the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a federally chartered trust bank, the latest in a wave of crypto firms seeking a single national licence that would cover all 50 U.S. states.
The proposed entity, to be called Payward National Trust Company (PNTC), would focus on custody and fiduciary services for institutional clients under direct federal oversight. If approved, it would allow Kraken to compete with regulated custodians without obtaining individual licences from each U.S. state. The filing follows similar applications or conditional approvals for Coinbase, Ripple, Circle, BitGo, and seven other firms over the past several months, bringing the total across the current OCC wave to 11 firms.
"A national trust company provides the certainty institutions require and establishes the infrastructure to build the next generation of custody," said Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Payward, in a statement reported by CoinDesk.
A Regulatory Wave With Limited Historical Precedent
The OCC advanced 11 crypto-related trust charter applications in just 83 days between December 2025 and March 2026, a pace that reflects two specific drivers: the April 1, 2026 rule change clarifying digital asset custody permissions, and the commercial incentives created by the GENIUS Act.
Before this wave, de novo national trust charters for digital asset firms were exceptionally rare. Anchorage Digital Bank stood as the only operational example in the sector for years, underscoring how seldom the OCC had granted charters of this kind to crypto firms before the current legislative and regulatory cycle opened the door.
A final OCC rule that took effect on April 1, 2026 clarified that national trust banks may conduct non-fiduciary digital asset custody. The rule replaced the prior phrase "fiduciary activities" with the broader formulation "operations of a trust company and activities related thereto," removing textual ambiguity that had complicated earlier applications.
Coinbase received conditional approval in April 2026; Ripple was among five firms conditionally approved in December 2025.
Despite the volume of applications, only Anchorage Digital Bank currently holds a fully operational OCC trust charter.
Importantly, a national trust bank is not a full commercial bank. It cannot take consumer deposits as a primary function or make loans. Its core purpose is holding, managing, and safeguarding assets under OCC supervision, with the key commercial advantage being a single federal licence rather than a patchwork of state-level permits.
Payward's Broader Regulatory Build-Out
Payward's OCC filing does not exist in isolation. The company has spent roughly 12 months and approximately $2.7 billion constructing a layered regulatory architecture across multiple U.S. frameworks.
It acquired NinjaTrader, a CFTC-registered futures commission merchant (FCM), for $1.5 billion in 2025.
It closed a $550 million acquisition of derivatives exchange Bitnomial on May 4, 2026, completing a full CFTC derivatives stack.
It already holds a Wyoming Special Purpose Depository Institution licence, established in 2020 through Kraken Financial, and in March 2026 became the first digital-asset firm to secure a Federal Reserve master account, giving it direct access to the Fed's core payment system.
Payward also reported $2.2 billion in adjusted revenue for 2025, up 33 percent year-on-year, with adjusted EBITDA of $531 million.
The company processed $2 trillion in platform transaction volume last year across 5.7 million funded accounts globally.
The Stablecoin Thread That Matters for Emerging Markets
One acquisition stands out for readers outside the United States. Payward acquired Reap Technologies, an Asia-focused stablecoin infrastructure company, for $600 million ahead of the May 8 OCC filing.
That deal intersects directly with the OCC charter because the GENIUS Act (the U.S. stablecoin legislation passed in 2025) designates national trust banks as permitted stablecoin issuers. In other words, if PNTC receives approval, Payward gains the regulatory standing to issue stablecoins under federal oversight.
This combination matters across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, where stablecoin settlement has become the dominant rail for cross-border value transfer. Indian institutional investors increasingly choose custody counterparties based on whether they carry OCC or FCA regulatory standing, because those licences provide cleaner compliance signals for local regulatory reporting. The Reserve Bank of India's residual hostility toward crypto does, however, limit Kraken's ability to offer fiat on-ramp services directly to Indian retail users, which means the practical benefit of an OCC charter in India is specifically institutional and high-net-worth in character, not a broad retail opportunity.
In Nigeria, the dynamic is distinct. Nigeria's Investment and Securities Act 2025 formally classified crypto as securities and placed operators under SEC Nigeria authority, raising the bar for which international counterparties domestic institutions can credibly partner with. For Nigerian institutions, an OCC-chartered Kraken entity would function as a meaningful due diligence signal, meaningfully raising Kraken's standing as a compliant counterparty in that market.
The competitive context is significant. African institutional players have to date relied primarily on BitGo, which received conditional OCC approval in December 2025, and Coinbase Custody as their institutional-grade custodians of choice. Yellow Card, one of Africa's leading regulated crypto platforms, has noted that choosing custodians with "proven multi-market compliance" is "a strategic lever" for African crypto expansion, a framing that signals precisely the kind of positioning Payward's regulatory build-out is designed to achieve.
The Asia Pacific custody market is projected to grow at a 24.8 percent compound annual growth rate, faster than any other region globally, according to Grand View Research. The global digital asset custody market was estimated at $3.28 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $7.74 billion by 2032.
What Comes Next
Payward's OCC application is a de novo filing, meaning it is building a new entity rather than converting an existing state licence. This approach is consistent with how Circle and Ripple structured their own applications.
The de novo process carries no guarantee of approval, and the OCC exercises broad discretion over charter grants.
According to Crypto Briefing, the company is approximately 80 percent ready for a public listing, with an IPO paused but not abandoned. Secondary market transactions in April 2026 implied a valuation of roughly $13 billion.
A federal trust charter, if granted, would represent a material addition to that story, cementing Payward's position not just as a trading platform but as a regulated infrastructure provider at the intersection of custody, derivatives, and stablecoin issuance across the India, UAE, and Africa corridors where demand is growing fastest.