Kraken Parent Payward Swaps Its Headline Metric, Reports $487 Million in Q3 Platform Margin

Payward, the privately held parent of Kraken, publishes selected quarterly figures rather than SEC filings, and until now led them with Adjusted Revenue: total revenue minus trading costs and gains or losses on trading. In August, Payward put that number at $508 million for the second quarter.

On Nov. 13, Payward published its third-quarter highlights led by a new number, total platform margin (TPM), which came to $487 million. That was 12% more than the $436 million Payward now shows for the second quarter, and 12% less than in the third quarter of 2025. A footnote in the release says Adjusted Revenue is still included “for comparison purposes only” and that “management no longer uses Adjusted Revenue to evaluate our business results.”

Asset-based and access-based TPM, Payward’s labels for what it earns on client balances and what clients and partners pay to use its products and services, made up 52% of the total, against 46% a year before. Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said on Unchained’s Bits + Bips in May that “the right way to read Payward in 2026 and beyond is not, hey, you’re just a bigger crypto exchange.”

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Both measures subtract the cost of crypto Payward delivers to buyers. TPM also subtracts staking rewards paid to clients, earned when client crypto helps secure proof-of-stake blockchains. Payward said in the release it made the change “so everything we pass on to clients is treated the same way.”

Second-quarter TPM was $62 million, or about 12%, below the $498 million in Adjusted Revenue the release now shows for that quarter, by Unchained’s calculation. The $498 million was recast from the $508 million Payward first reported in August. On the old measure, third-quarter Adjusted Revenue was $553 million, up 11% from the second quarter and down 15% from a year earlier.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), adjusted to exclude items such as stock-based pay, is what Payward calls Adjusted EBITDA. It was $60 million, up from $23 million in the second quarter but down from $181 million a year earlier, the release shows.

Payward’s platforms handled $353 billion in transactions, 22% more than in the second quarter and 30% less than in the same period of 2025. Funded accounts, not a count of unique clients, numbered 7.1 million, 7% more than three months earlier and 37% more than a year before.

xStocks, Payward’s tokenized stocks, added more than 200 UK and EU names this week.

TPM and Adjusted EBITDA fall outside generally accepted accounting principles, and the release does not say the figures were audited. Payward confidentially submitted draft initial public offering paperwork to the SEC in November 2025.

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