SoFi Technologies and Payward, the company behind crypto exchange Kraken, struck a deal to wire SoFi’s real-time banking settlement network into Kraken’s digital-asset infrastructure. One concrete output: a SoFi-branded stablecoin listed on Kraken’s order book. The Block
Payward is joining the SoFi Exchange Network, or SEN, the settlement rail SoFi rolled out in April 2026 alongside its “Big Business Banking” push. On the flip side, SoFi gains Kraken Prime as a second liquidity source for crypto trades routed through its own app. Kraken lists SoFiUSD, a stablecoin stamped with the bank’s name. Institutional clients can settle dollar transfers between the two networks around the clock, seven days a week.
The tie-up arrives as SoFi’s crypto business accelerates. Crypto transaction revenue reached $134.3 million in the second quarter of 2026, a 10% climb from the first quarter. That figure sits inside $1.2 billion in adjusted net revenue for the same period. Crypto matters, but it is still a minority contributor to the top line.
Payward has been building toward this for months. Kraken Financial, the firm’s Wyoming-chartered bank, picked up a Federal Reserve master account in March 2026. That gave it direct access to the central bank’s payment system. Two months later, in May, Payward filed with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust company charter, naming the entity Payward National Trust Company. Both moves predate the SoFi agreement. They frame the deal less as a greenfield push and more as connective tissue between two already-licensed rails.
“Money and markets are converging into a new financial paradigm, and the infrastructure underneath has to catch up,” Payward Co-CEO David Ripley said in a statement shared with The Block. He added that “millions of people will buy their first crypto asset 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.”
That framing leans on distribution. SoFi brings the deposit accounts and the paycheck deposits. Kraken brings the order book and the custody stack. What the disclosure leaves out: whether the two firms split revenue on trades routed through Kraken Prime, or on SoFiUSD issuance. No financial terms were disclosed. No timeline was given for when the SEN connection or the stablecoin listing would go live. SoFi did not provide an executive quote in the statement The Block reviewed.
The direction is unmistakable. Banks have spent the past two years bolting on crypto trading access through third-party integrations. This deal stitches the back end together at the settlement layer, where dollar movements and asset transfers happen in the same window. The 24/7 settlement claim carries weight. Traditional bank wires stop on weekends and after close, a gap that has pushed crypto traders toward stablecoins and private settlement networks for years.
SoFiUSD’s listing on Kraken puts another stablecoin into a market where issuance is concentrated among a small number of operators. The statement did not describe the token’s reserves, issuance model, or the blockchain it would run on. Strip away those missing details and the stablecoin is a name and a listing venue. Not yet a product with auditable backing.
Ripley’s “converging” language is the kind of thesis that papers over unresolved mechanics. A national trust charter application is not an approval. A Fed master account does not by itself make a crypto bank a settlement counterparty for every institution on SEN. The deal’s substance depends on execution details neither company released.
Traders, as ever, will watch the volume.
No SoFi executive was quoted. The companies did not disclose whether the arrangement is exclusive. Decrypt separately reported the partnership, corroborating the structure but without adding new financial terms or a timeline.
