Crypto exchanges have committed over $5.8 billion in announced acquisitions since March 2025, pursuing a strategy that extends their businesses well beyond spot trading into derivatives, payments, and cross-border settlement infrastructure. Payward Inc., the parent company of Kraken, disclosed on...
"Even in a risk-off scenario, we would still expect M&A to remain active, because the largest exchanges and a handful of scaled infrastructure players have strong balance sheets." — Karl-Martin Ahrend, Co-Founder, Areta
Crypto exchanges have committed over $5.8 billion in announced acquisitions since March 2025, pursuing a strategy that extends their businesses well beyond spot trading into derivatives, payments, and cross-border settlement infrastructure. Payward Inc., the parent company of Kraken, disclosed on May 7 that it will acquire Hong Kong-based stablecoin payments firm Reap Technologies for $600 million in cash and stock. The deal marks Payward's third major acquisition in 14 months, bringing its total announced M&A spend to approximately $2.65 billion across NinjaTrader ($1.5 billion, March 2025), Bitnomial ($550 million, closed May 4, 2026), and now Reap.
The pattern extends beyond Kraken. Coinbase closed its $2.9 billion purchase of options exchange Deribit in August 2025. Ripple completed its $1.25 billion acquisition of prime broker Hidden Road in October 2025. Total crypto-sector M&A reached $37 billion across 356 transactions in 2025, a sevenfold increase from the prior year, according to data tracked by Areta. Industry advisors expect 2026 to exceed that figure.
The common thread: exchanges are no longer competing solely on trading fees. They are buying regulated licenses, payment rails, and institutional infrastructure to assemble vertically integrated financial platforms.
Payward will pay $600 million in cash and stock for Reap Technologies, valuing Payward's equity at $20 billion, according to Bloomberg. Reap, founded by former Stripe Asia-Pacific head Daren Guo and former investment banker Kevin Kang, operates stablecoin-native payment infrastructure for businesses across Hong Kong, Singapore, Mexico, and Brazil. Products include Reap Card (a corporate card funded via stablecoin rails), programmable payment APIs, and cross-border B2B settlement services built primarily on USDC.
Reap was profitable in 2025 and had raised approximately $60 million in venture funding prior to the acquisition. The company processes billions in stablecoin-funded payments monthly, according to its own disclosures. The Singapore-to-China corridor is its most active stablecoin payment route.
The transaction is signed but remains subject to regulatory approvals in Hong Kong and Singapore. Closing is expected in the coming months.
Three deals define Payward's transformation from crypto exchange to multi-asset financial services company:
| Deal | Target | Value | Announced | Status | What It Adds | |------|--------|-------|-----------|--------|--------------| | 1 | NinjaTrader | $1.5B | Mar 2025 | Closed | U.S. retail futures platform, FCM license | | 2 | Bitnomial | $550M | Apr 17, 2026 | Closed May 4 | DCM + DCO + FCM — full CFTC derivatives stack | | 3 | Reap Technologies | $600M | May 7, 2026 | Pending | Stablecoin B2B payments, Asia-Pacific distribution |
The NinjaTrader acquisition gave Kraken access to U.S. retail futures trading and an existing FCM license. Bitnomial added the two remaining CFTC licenses — a Designated Contract Market (DCM) and a Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO) — making Payward the operator of a complete regulated U.S. derivatives stack without reliance on third-party venues. Kraken plans to layer spot margin, perpetuals, and options onto this infrastructure.
Reap fills a different gap entirely: payments and treasury management for businesses, using stablecoin settlement rails. The deal positions Kraken to capture revenue from cross-border B2B flows rather than depending solely on retail and institutional trading volume.
Payward's 2025 financials provide context for this spending. The company reported $2.2 billion in adjusted revenue, up 33% year-over-year, with $531 million in adjusted EBITDA. Trading accounted for approximately 47% of revenue; asset-based activities and other sources contributed 53%. Total transaction volume reached $2 trillion, and funded accounts grew 50% to 5.7 million.
Kraken is not operating in isolation. The major crypto exchanges pursued aggressive acquisition strategies simultaneously:
Coinbase closed its $2.9 billion purchase of Deribit in August 2025, ahead of schedule. Deribit brought $185 billion in monthly trading volume and roughly $60 billion in open interest at the time of completion. The deal remains the largest crypto acquisition on record.
Ripple completed its $1.25 billion acquisition of prime broker Hidden Road in October 2025, rebranding the unit as Ripple Prime. One year on, the business has tripled in size, with daily transactions exceeding 60 million, according to Ripple.
In aggregate, crypto-sector M&A reached $37 billion across 356 transactions in 2025 — a sevenfold increase in deal value and 74% increase in deal count versus 2024, per Areta's data. Thirty-nine transactions exceeded $100 million; 17 surpassed $500 million. The investing and trading vertical accounted for 27.8% of all activity.
These numbers represent a structural shift. Exchanges are not acquiring for scale within their existing businesses. They are buying adjacent capabilities — prime brokerage, derivatives licensing, payment infrastructure — to assemble conglomerates that can serve institutional and corporate clients across multiple product lines.
Kraken's acquisition of Reap signals a specific strategic bet: that the next revenue layer for crypto exchanges lies in B2B payments and treasury management, not just in expanding trading volume.
The logic follows from two observable trends. First, trading fee margins have been compressing across the industry. A separate webthreepedia analysis documented Wall Street brokerages entering crypto with fee schedules as low as 50 basis points, intensifying price competition. Exchanges that depend primarily on trading revenue face margin pressure from both traditional finance entrants and each other.
Second, stablecoin payment volumes are growing at rates that dwarf trading volume growth. B2B stablecoin payment volume surged 30-fold from under $100 million monthly in early 2023 to over $3 billion monthly in 2025, according to Artemis research data cited by Reap. The most active payment origins include the United States, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
Owning payment infrastructure allows an exchange to capture a share of this flow — card interchange, FX conversion, settlement fees, treasury management — without exposure to the volatility of trading volumes or token prices. It converts a cyclical trading business into a more predictable payments business.
The Kraken-MoneyGram partnership announced on May 5 reinforces this direction. Kraken customers can now convert cryptocurrency into cash at MoneyGram's network of nearly 500,000 retail locations across more than 100 countries. The partnership addresses what Kraken calls the "last mile" problem — connecting digital asset holdings to physical cash infrastructure.
Reap's business sits at the intersection of two expanding markets: B2B cross-border payments and stablecoin settlement.
Traditional cross-border B2B payment flows are estimated at $39 trillion annually, with transaction costs averaging 1.5% to 3% through correspondent banking networks. Stablecoin-based settlement compresses both the cost and the time. A USDC transfer on Ethereum L2 settles in seconds at a fraction of the cost of a SWIFT wire.
Reap's competitive position rests on its regulated card-issuing infrastructure and its ability to connect stablecoin deposits to traditional payment networks. A business can hold USDC in its treasury, pay suppliers via stablecoin rails, and issue corporate cards that settle from stablecoin balances — all without converting to fiat until the point of sale.
The acquisition of Reap by Kraken creates a distribution channel that neither company had independently. Kraken brings 5.7 million funded accounts and institutional client relationships. Reap brings the payment rails and regulatory approvals in Asia-Pacific markets. The combined entity can offer institutional clients a single platform for trading, derivatives, custody, and now B2B payments.
Payward's acquisition strategy is inseparable from its IPO trajectory. The company confidentially filed with the SEC in November 2025 and subsequently paused the process, according to CoinDesk reporting from March 2026. Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said in May that Kraken is "80% ready" for an IPO.
The acquisitions improve the IPO narrative in measurable ways. NinjaTrader and Bitnomial deliver regulated derivatives capabilities in the U.S. Reap provides geographic diversification into Asia-Pacific markets. MoneyGram partnership adds fiat on/off-ramp scale. Together, they shift the revenue composition away from crypto-only trading, which public market investors have historically discounted due to cyclicality.
The Bitnomial deal is particularly significant from a regulatory standpoint. Payward now holds all three CFTC-issued licenses required to operate a complete domestic derivatives business: DCM, DCO, and FCM. This is a rare configuration in the crypto industry and removes the regulatory uncertainty that has constrained other exchanges from offering onshore U.S. crypto derivatives.
Kraken's valuation has been reported at $20 billion in the context of these recent deals, down from a prior funding round at the same level but reflecting the broader market's rerating of crypto exchange valuations. For comparison, Coinbase trades at a market capitalization of roughly $50-60 billion as a public company with $6.6 billion in 2025 revenue.
The crypto exchange sector is undergoing a consolidation phase that mirrors traditional financial services M&A patterns. Exchanges are buying what they cannot build quickly enough: regulatory licenses, payment infrastructure, and institutional distribution channels.
Payward's $2.65 billion acquisition spree positions Kraken as a multi-product financial services company rather than a standalone trading venue. Whether this strategy generates returns depends on execution — integrating NinjaTrader's retail futures users, Bitnomial's clearinghouse operations, and Reap's Asian payment rails into a coherent platform is operationally complex.
The broader implication is structural. As exchanges absorb adjacent businesses, the distinction between a crypto exchange and a financial services conglomerate continues to erode. The competition is no longer about who has the lowest trading fees or the most token listings. It is about who owns the infrastructure stack from trade execution through settlement, clearing, and ultimately payment.