Kraken parent Payward moves to buy Lithuania's Saldo Bank, pending regulators

Payward, the parent company of Kraken, said on October 14 that it has agreed to acquire Saldo Bank, a Lithuanian lender holding a full EU banking licence. The deal was first reported by the Financial Times and relayed by CoinDesk and Decrypt. The price is undisclosed. Completion is expected in 2027, subject to approval by the Bank of Lithuania and other relevant supervisors; neither outlet names the full regulator stack. The FT framing — first crypto firm to buy an EU bank — is the FT's and the acquirers', not our own.

The deal, as disclosed

• Buyer: Payward Inc. (Kraken's parent).
• Target: Saldo Bank, headquartered in Lithuania, licensed as a specialised bank by the Bank of Lithuania in 2021.
• Scope reported by Saldo: deposit-taking, consumer and business lending, payments. CoinDesk cites Saldo's EU footprint as Lithuania, Finland, Sweden and Germany, with a passport into the Netherlands. Decrypt lists only the Lithuanian licence and the 2021 grant date.
• Price: not disclosed.
• Timing: expected close 2027.
• Executive on the record: Arjun Sethi, Payward co-CEO. CoinDesk and Decrypt both quote Sethi, but the sentences differ — both appear to be lifted from the FT; the quotes are not interchangeable.

Saldo's own balance-sheet reference points, per CoinDesk citing The Banks: total assets of €163.9 million (~$180 million) at end-2025, growth of 22.7% year on year. CoinDesk's headline figure of $190 million total assets is inconsistent with that body paragraph; we go with the €163.9m / ~$180m number from the cited source.

What Payward already has in Europe

CoinDesk and Decrypt both list the stack:

• A Federal Reserve limited-purpose master account in the U.S., allowing direct Fed settlement for Kraken's domestic flows.
• An e-money institution licence in Ireland, which Payward has used as its Europe passporting hub.
• A pending application for a U.S. national trust bank charter at the OCC (per Decrypt).
• More than $2 billion in loans originated to date (per CoinDesk).

A full EU banking licence via Saldo adds what the Irish e-money licence does not: deposit-taking and lending on-balance-sheet across the EU, under the Bank of Lithuania's single banking supervision inside the ECB's Single Supervisory Mechanism for significant institutions. Payward's wording in the two secondary pieces describes the move as a route to native-euro deposits and lending, alongside the existing crypto venue.

How this maps to the MiCA / banking split

Under MiCA, crypto-asset services (CASP) and electronic money (EMI) sit alongside the pre-existing bank licence regime. A specialised bank licence like Saldo's does not replace a CASP licence for crypto services; Kraken's EU CASP footprint is a separate workstream. What the Saldo acquisition unlocks is the banking leg:

1. Taking retail and business euro deposits on-balance-sheet, instead of as a safeguarded client-money pool at a partner bank.
2. Issuing credit against those deposits, including crypto-collateralised and non-collateralised consumer products within Saldo's licence scope.
3. Direct access to euro payment rails, including the Eurosystem through Lithuania's TARGET2 participation.

The combination of a crypto venue, an e-money licence, a CASP licence, and a bank licence inside the same group is what competitors like Revolut and N26 already run; Payward would be the first crypto-native parent to assemble that stack in the EU, if the FT framing holds and no other crypto group pre-empts the "first" claim between now and 2027.

What to watch

1. Bank of Lithuania decision and ECB posture. A bank acquisition is reviewed by the national competent authority with ECB involvement where the target or the resulting group crosses the significant-institution threshold. Any public opinion from either body is the primary signal.
2. A Payward or Saldo press release. As of writing, neither party has posted a dedicated release; the FT is the only primary piece of reporting and sits behind a paywall. Any confirmatory filing — a formal change-of-control notification published in Lithuanian — is the next primary document to appear.
3. Scope of the combined entity's deposit insurance. Lithuanian specialised banks are covered by the national Deposit Insurance Fund up to €100,000; whether Payward markets Saldo-based deposits as a safer parking venue for euro balances than existing partner-bank arrangements is the first retail product signal.
4. Interaction with Kraken's Irish EMI. The Irish entity is Payward's current EEA passporting hub. Whether functions migrate to the Lithuanian bank, or the two run in parallel with distinct licences, drives how Kraken books European flows next year.

Context

European regulators have spent the last three years opening and tightening a parallel regime for crypto firms (MiCA, DORA) while leaving the bank licence regime largely as-is. Payward's move is the first large-scale test of a crypto-native group reaching across the two regimes rather than between them. For French and German retail users already banking with Revolut Bank UAB, which runs on the same Lithuanian specialised-bank licence under Bank of Lithuania supervision, the regulatory template is familiar — only the parent changes.