Kraken’s parent company Payward has agreed to acquire Hong Kong-based stablecoin payments firm Reap Technologies in a $600 million cash-and-stock transaction, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing Payward and Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi. The deal values Payward’s stock at $20 billion and is described by Sethi as the company’s third-largest acquisition to date.
The acquisition marks Kraken’s first infrastructure deal in Asia, a region the exchange has increasingly identified as a core growth priority.
Reap Technologies, founded by former Stripe Asia-Pacific lead Daren Guo and ex-investment banker Kevin Kang, provides cross-border and business payment infrastructure that bridges traditional financial rails with digital asset networks, with stablecoin-powered settlement at its core.
Sethi Eyes Asia as Fastest Growing Revenue Market
Arjun Sethi, speaking to Bloomberg, was direct about the strategic rationale. “If you take Europe out, the fastest growing market is Asia, not just revenue but also asset-on-platform,” he said.
“They have already done it in Asia. They can expand into the US overnight with us.” That framing positions Reap less as a bet on future potential and more as a shortcut to an already-operating payments network across one of crypto’s most active corridors.
Reap’s infrastructure focuses on business-to-business payment flows, allowing companies to settle cross-border transactions using stablecoins rather than conventional correspondent banking networks.
For Kraken, that capability feeds directly into a broader effort to build a full-stack financial services platform that can compete with both traditional payment processors and newer crypto-native fintech firms.
The deal is not Payward’s first major move in recent weeks. On April 17, the company announced it would acquire U.S.
digital asset derivatives platform Bitnomial for up to $550 million in a cash-and-stock transaction that also pegged Payward’s valuation at $20 billion.
Bitnomial holds all three licenses required to operate a full-stack derivatives business in the United States, covering a designated contract market, a derivatives clearing organization, and a futures commission merchant.
That combination, which took Bitnomial over a decade to assemble, effectively hands Kraken a ready-built regulatory foundation for U.S. derivatives without repeating the same multi-year buildout process.
Together, the two acquisitions signal a deliberate two-front strategy: regulatory infrastructure in the United States through Bitnomial, and payments and settlement infrastructure in Asia through Reap.
The sequencing is fast, with both deals announced within weeks of each other, and both structured using the same $20 billion Payward stock valuation as currency.
IPO Ambitions Running Parallel to Acquisition Spree
Alongside the deal news, Sethi has been publicly advancing Kraken’s IPO timeline. Speaking at Consensus Miami 2026 on Tuesday, he said Kraken is “about 80% ready” to go public.
The company also used the conference to announce a new partnership with MoneyGram aimed at addressing what Sethi called crypto’s “last mile” problem, meaning the gap between digital asset balances and real-world spending or cash access for everyday users.
Taken together, the MoneyGram partnership, the Bitnomial acquisition, and now the Reap deal paint a picture of a company accelerating toward an IPO by filling in specific functional gaps rather than waiting for organic growth alone.
The Reap deal adds a revenue-generating, Asia-operating payments business to Payward’s balance sheet, which could strengthen the prospectus narrative around geographic diversification and stablecoin infrastructure at a moment when both themes carry weight with institutional investors.
Stablecoin payment infrastructure has attracted growing attention across the financial sector in 2026, with banks, payment processors, and fintech firms all moving to integrate stablecoin settlement into cross-border workflows.
Reap’s specific focus on business payment flows rather than retail crypto speculation places it in a segment of the market that regulators and institutional counterparties have shown more comfort engaging with, potentially smoothing Kraken’s path as it scales the business and pursues its public listing.
Sethi has not announced a specific IPO date. But with two major acquisitions now closed or in process, a MoneyGram partnership live, and a co-CEO willing to state a readiness percentage on a main stage, Payward is clearly treating 2026 as the year its market structure takes its final pre-IPO shape.
The Reap deal is the latest piece placed into that structure, and for a company that had no Asia infrastructure presence before this week, it is a significant one.
Not Financial Advice: This article is for informational purposes only. Crypto investments are highly volatile. Always do your own research.
