Payward to acquire Hong Kong stablecoin firm Reap for $600M

Payward Inc., the parent company of Kraken, has agreed to acquire Hong Kong-based Reap Technologies for $600 million. The deal will be funded with a mix of cash and stock, with Payward issuing shares that value the company at $20 billion, Arjun Sethi, co-chief executive of Payward and Kraken, said.

Reap provides stablecoin-based cross-border and business payment services that link traditional financial systems with digital-asset rails for international money transfers. The firm is led by Daren Guo, who previously built Stripe’s Asia Pacific business, and Kevin Kang, a former investment banker.

Payward plans to integrate Reap into the B2B infrastructure platform it launched this year. The platform offers stablecoin payments, digital-asset trading and lending services to fintechs, banks, brokerages and businesses that accept cryptocurrency payments.

Payward expects the acquisition to expand its B2B payments capabilities in Asia and to enable products such as card issuance and stablecoin payment rails for businesses and financial institutions.

Sethi said Asia is Payward’s fastest-growing market outside Europe, citing platform revenue and assets as drivers that could support a larger U.S. presence. He described the Reap purchase as Payward’s first infrastructure deal in Asia and one of the company’s largest acquisitions to date.

The transaction follows several recent Payward purchases, including a CFTC-licensed derivatives venue acquired days earlier for up to $550 million and last year’s $1.5 billion acquisition of retail futures platform NinjaTrader. Earlier deals included a token-vesting platform, a tokenized-asset issuer, a regulated derivatives venue and a crypto proprietary trading platform.

Payward reported $2.2 billion in adjusted revenue for 2025 and confidentially filed for an initial public offering late last year. The company has used a mix of cash and stock in recent transactions while consolidating trading, payments and derivatives infrastructure under the Kraken parent.

Payward expects the combined business to produce new enterprise products and faster cross-border settlement for corporate clients that use stablecoins for payments and treasury management.