Payward Signs Deal for Saldo Bank, Giving Kraken’s Owner a Foothold in EU Banking

Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, has signed a definitive agreement to buy Saldo Bank, a digital lender licensed in Lithuania, giving it a route to offering interest on deposits and loans to customers in the European Union.

The company announced the deal on Oct. 14. Payward is acquiring Saldo Finance Oy, a Finnish holding company that owns Saldo Bank UAB. The announcement did not include a price. Payward expects the purchase to complete in 2027, once regulators and standard closing conditions are satisfied.

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Saldo Bank operates in four markets, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden and Germany, and holds a passport into the Netherlands. The bank serves retail and small-business customers. It offers term deposits in all four markets, consumer loans in Lithuania, Finland and Sweden, and business loans in Lithuania and Finland. Its Finnish credit card is already live, with Sweden next in 2027. Separately, Saldo supplies lending infrastructure to fintech partners in Finland and Germany.

Once the deal closes, Payward said it expects to use the bank to pay interest on deposits, expand its lending, including credit cards, and sell banking-as-a-service tools such as card issuance and SEPA payments access to other companies. All of it depends on regulators signing off.

“A banking license is only as valuable as what you build on top of it,” Jarkko Mäensivu, Saldo Bank’s president, said in the release.

The bank would add to a stack of regulated licenses Payward already holds. Kraken’s banking arm received a limited-purpose Federal Reserve master account in March. Payward also holds an electronic money institution license from the Central Bank of Ireland and says it has originated more than $2 billion in loans.

Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said in the announcement that the company has been building its banking business license by license, and that “we are starting in the EU, and the ambition is global.”

Sethi also shared a line from JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on X that day, amid the fight over yield on stablecoin and crypto balances: “if you want to be a bank, become a bank.”

Payward said work on integrating Saldo and on securing regulatory approval is already underway.

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