Kraken Parent Payward to Buy Lithuania's Saldo Bank

Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Saldo Finance Oy, the Finnish holding company of Lithuania-licensed Saldo Bank, the company announced on Wednesday. Terms were not disclosed, and the deal is expected to close in 2027, subject to regulatory approvals.

Saldo Bank UAB is a digital-first specialized bank licensed by the European Central Bank and supervised by the Bank of Lithuania. It serves customers in Lithuania, Finland, Sweden and Germany and holds a passport to operate in the Netherlands. The bank offers retail term deposits in all of its markets, consumer loans in Lithuania, Finland and Sweden, and secured and unsecured SME loans in Lithuania and Finland. It also runs a credit card in Finland, with a Swedish launch planned for 2027, and provides SEPA payments access and embedded lending to other fintechs in Finland and Germany. Saldo had more than 90 employees at the end of September.

The acquisition is a step up from the licenses Payward currently relies on in Europe. Its banking arm holds an electronic money institution license from the Central Bank of Ireland, which allows it to hold customer funds and process payments but not to pay interest on deposits or make loans from them. A credit institution license removes those restrictions. Payward said the deal would let its banking division offer European clients interest on deposits, lending products and banking-as-a-service, including card issuance and SME lending, subject to approvals.

"Payward Banking is not a new ambition – it is a business we have been building license by license, market by market," said co-CEO Arjun Sethi. Saldo Bank president Jarkko Mäensivu said that "a banking license is only as valuable as what you build on top of it."

The purchase fits a pattern of Payward assembling regulated infrastructure in both the U.S. and Europe this year. In March, Kraken became the first digital asset bank to receive a limited-purpose Federal Reserve master account, and in May the company applied to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust bank charter. Payward now describes itself as an infrastructure platform with four divisions spanning trading, banking, asset management and services, sitting behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, xStocks and CF Benchmarks. It said Payward Banking has originated more than $2 billion in loans.

Buying an existing bank is a quicker route to a European credit institution license than applying for a new one, which typically requires ECB authorisation from scratch. A change of control at Saldo will still need sign-off from the Bank of Lithuania and the ECB, and supervisors are likely to look closely at a crypto-native owner taking over a deposit-taking bank.