Kraken Parent Payward to Acquire Reap in Deal Worth Up to $600M
Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, has agreed to acquire Hong Kong-based Reap Technologies in a cash-and-stock deal worth up to $600 million. The transaction, announced on 7 May, deepens Kraken's push into payments infrastructure and signals how aggressively crypto-native firms are now building rails that compete directly with traditional banking.
The acquisition values Payward's equity at roughly $20 billion and is expected to close in the second half of 2026. Reap will continue to operate as a standalone platform, keeping its current leadership, brand and market approach.
What Reap brings to the table
Reap is a payments infrastructure provider that connects card networks, banking systems and blockchains through a single API, with settlement carried out in stablecoins. Its platform supports corporate card issuance, cross-border payouts and treasury management for businesses operating across Asia, Latin America and other regions.
Founded by former Stripe Asia-Pacific lead Daren Guo and ex-investment banker Kevin Kang, the company has scaled quickly. Reap nearly tripled revenue and transaction volumes in 2025 and, by the middle of that year, was processing around $3 billion in monthly volume. It has also expanded its licensing footprint from Asia into South America.
A banking-rails strategy in plain sight
For a banking audience, the more interesting story is the infrastructure play. The Reap deal is the latest in a roughly $2.7 billion acquisition run by Payward over the past year, following purchases of futures broker NinjaTrader, regulated derivatives venue Bitnomial and tokenised equities firm Backed. Together, these moves assemble a full-stack financial platform that spans trading, derivatives, tokenised assets and now cross-border payments.
That ambition rests on a growing stack of regulatory permissions, including an Irish e-money licence, a UK FCA e-money authorisation and federal reserve account access through Kraken Financial. Acquiring Reap adds card issuance and stablecoin settlement to the mix, while giving Reap access to Kraken's US and European licences. The companies say they intend to extend stablecoin-powered payments across the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America.
"Finance is moving in one direction. Continuous markets. Programmable money. Autonomous execution. The infrastructure for that world has to be open, regulated and operational at global scale on Day 1," said Payward co-CEO Arjun Sethi.
Reap chief executive Daren Guo said the combined business would connect stablecoin cards and payments to a full suite of crypto-native financial services. For banks watching the cross-border payments market, the message is clear: stablecoin settlement is moving from experiment to operational infrastructure, and well-capitalised challengers are buying their way into the plumbing.
