SoFi Technologies and Payward, the parent company of Kraken, announced a partnership on September 3 that connects SoFi's banking infrastructure to Kraken's crypto trading business. Payward will join the SoFi Exchange Network, and Kraken will list SoFiUSD, SoFi's bank-issued stablecoin, while SoFi will tap Kraken Prime for digital asset liquidity, according to SoFi's investor relations announcement .
SoFiUSD is redeemable one-to-one for U.S. dollars and is issued directly by a regulated financial institution rather than a standalone crypto company, a distinction SoFi has emphasized as it builds out its digital asset offering. Listing it on Kraken gives the exchange's retail, professional and institutional customers access to a bank-backed stablecoin alongside the market's existing dollar tokens.
The more structurally significant piece is the SoFi Exchange Network itself. It is a real-time settlement system that lets institutional clients clear and settle U.S. dollar transactions around the clock, rather than only during traditional banking hours. By joining it, Payward's institutional clients gain a way to move dollars and manage liquidity on weekends and outside standard settlement windows, addressing a long-standing mismatch between crypto markets that trade continuously and a banking system that does not.
"The financial system should not shut down when markets stay open," SoFi CEO Anthony Noto said in the announcement, framing the deal around building infrastructure where money moves without the delays of conventional banking rails. Payward co-CEO David Ripley described it as a response to money and markets converging into what he called "a new financial paradigm" that requires updated underlying infrastructure, according to Kraken's own account of the partnership .
SoFi reported 15.8 million members and said its Tech Solutions division serves more than 134 million accounts globally, giving Payward a large distribution surface if the integration extends to consumer-facing products beyond the initial institutional settlement and stablecoin listing.
The tie-up is the latest example of exchanges and fintechs building toward each other from opposite directions: crypto platforms adding stocks, derivatives and payments, and banks and neobanks adding stablecoins and blockchain settlement. Kraken has also been preparing for a public listing, having confidentially filed for an IPO in November 2025, which makes deals like this one with SoFi part of a broader push to demonstrate institutional-grade banking relationships ahead of any listing.
