Kraken parent Payward agrees to acquire Saldo Bank, a Lithuanian lender with 164 million euros in assets

Payward, the parent of the Kraken crypto exchange, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Saldo Finance Oy, a Finnish holding company whose subsidiary, Saldo Bank UAB, is a digital bank licensed in Lithuania, according to CoinDesk and Cointelegraph. The purchase price was not disclosed. The deal needs regulatory approval and is expected to close in 2027.

CoinDesk, citing the Financial Times, reports it would make Payward the first crypto company to buy a bank in Europe. We could not retrieve Payward's own announcement this run, so the details below come from the two crypto desks, which agree with each other.

The number behind the number: this is a licence, not a balance sheet

Saldo Bank had 163.9 million euros (about $180 million) in total assets at the end of 2025, up 22.7% from a year earlier, CoinDesk reported, citing The Banks. That is tiny next to the scale Payward talks about elsewhere: it says its banking business has already originated more than $2 billion in loans. One figure is a stock of assets and the other is a flow of lending, so they are not a like-for-like comparison, but the gap makes the point. Nobody is paying for Saldo's loan book. The asset is the authorisation.

Per Cointelegraph, that authorisation covers Lithuania, Finland, Sweden and Germany, where the bank already offers retail term deposits, and it is passported into the Netherlands. Payward says it would let it offer interest on deposits, lending, and banking-as-a-service such as card issuance to small and medium-sized enterprises. (One caveat on the data: CoinDesk's summary line rounds the bank's assets to $190 million, while its body text gives the 163.9 million euro figure; we use the latter.)

One more piece of a banking build-out

This is the latest step in a pattern we have been tracking. Last week Payward linked up with Singapore Gulf Bank for round-the-clock dollar settlement (our report), and CoinDesk reported it was in talks with Wells Fargo over trading liquidity, which neither company has confirmed (our report). CoinDesk also notes Payward has applied for a U.S. national trust bank charter, its banking arm has limited access to the Federal Reserve's payment system, and it holds an electronic money institution licence in Ireland.

The common thread is holding the regulated plumbing itself instead of renting it from banks. For a crypto firm, bank accounts and settlement rails have historically been the point where access could be withdrawn.

Who this actually touches

A small business in Germany or the Nordics paying a crypto-linked supplier. If the deal closes, a euro account and card at a crypto-native bank becomes possible, which is an alternative to a conventional bank that may be reluctant to serve crypto-adjacent firms. That is a possibility, not an announced product.

A crypto trader holding euros on an exchange. Balances held at a bank carry different protections from balances held on an exchange. Whether Payward's customers' euros would sit at Saldo, and under which deposit protection, has not been stated; read the terms when they are published.

Traditional EU banks. They now have a competitor that can take deposits and lend, which is the line crypto firms used to stay behind.

What to watch

The closing is more than a year away and approval is not guaranteed. Watch for the price, which will show how much Payward paid for a licence, and for the European regulators' response. Live prices for the major coins are on our crypto prices page.

Sources: CoinDesk; Cointelegraph; Financial Times and The Banks as cited by CoinDesk. This is market information, not investment advice.