SoFi and Payward Team to Link Banking and Digital Asset Markets

Financial services app SoFi has joined forces with Payward, parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken.

With this partnership, Payward will leverage SoFi’s “Big Business Banking” capabilities, join the SoFi Exchange Network (SEN) and list the SoFiUSD stablecoin on its multi-asset trading platform, the companies said in a Thursday (Sept. 3) news release.

SofiFi will use Payward’s Kraken Prime brokerage solution as another source of digital asset liquidity, with qualified custody capabilities available as the relationship grows.

“The financial system should not shut down when markets stay open,” Anthony Noto, SoFi’s chief executive, said in the release.

The partnership lets Payward clients retain access to the market via SoFi’s SEN, where they can clear and settle U.S. dollar transactions around the clock. The release added that extending settlement beyond traditional banking hours also improves the money movement process, letting clients to transmit money and manage liquidity on “an always-on schedule.”

“Money and markets are converging into a new financial paradigm, and the infrastructure underneath has to catch up,” said David Ripley, Co-CEO of Payward. “Collaborating with SoFi lets us close that gap, and it works in both directions. Millions of people will buy their first cryptoasset inside the app they already use for their paycheck, and the infrastructure behind that experience should connect them to deep, liquid markets built to operate at scale.”

In other SoFi news, PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster spoke earlier this week with Kathleen Pierce-Gilmore, the company’s president.

Three months into the job, the former Visa executive said her strategy is based around the idea that banks, credit unions and software platforms know their customers in different ways, and SoFi can offer the financial technology to act on that information.

“For example, a community bank, credit union or software platform may have customer knowledge SoFi doesn’t,” that report said. SoFi “can provide the accounts, payments, lending and money-movement infrastructure behind the financial products they offer.”

Pierce-Gilmore told Webster her shorthand for the model is to serve, as she put it, as the “AWS of financial solutions.”

The analogy reflects that range SoFi has assembled, the report said, with the company spanning account and ledger capabilities, lending through Peach, money movement such as ACH, FedNow and wires, and functions such as fraud and disputes.

Pierce-Gilmore’s aim is to make those capabilities viable in different combinations according to what a client wants to provide.

“Anytime someone is creating a financial solution, it is just a matter of putting certain ingredients together,” Pierce-Gilmore said, adding that the strategy depends partially on which customers need those ingredients and what they’re trying to create.