Payward and Singapore Gulf Bank launch 24/7 dollar settlement for institutional crypto

Payward has integrated Singapore Gulf Bank's SGB Net clearing network, letting institutional clients settle qualifying digital-asset transactions around the clock and fund trading on days the banks are closed, beginning with U.S. dollar transactions for a select group of clients in eligible Asian and Gulf jurisdictions, the Kraken operator announced Sunday.

Mark Greenberg, Payward's chief commercial officer, put the problem plainly: crypto assets trade through weekends and overnight, while the cash that funds them still answers to bank cut-off times and multi-day settlement. Exchanges, payment providers, OTC desks and fintechs all run into the same constraint. SGB Net lets a client deposit funds with Payward and use them immediately, and paired with Kraken Prime's liquidity, that client can move cash and trade without waiting for the next banking day.

The firms did not disclose how many clients are in the first cohort or what transaction volumes the service carries, saying only that they intend to add clients and currencies over time. The bank's clearing network, launched in 2025, processes more than $20 billion in fiat transactions each month, according to Singapore Gulf Bank, which gives the integration a live rail on day one.

The launch follows a report last week that BNY is in discussions with Payward over a potential tie-up spanning digital assets, custody, trading and payments. That report describes talks, not a completed agreement, and carries none of the operational weight of the SGB integration, which is live now with a regional bank.

Payward has been expanding beyond Kraken's exchange business into the infrastructure that connects trading, custody, payments and banking—the same perimeter this publication covered when it reported on Payward's regulated door onto Hyperliquid. The SGB arrangement adds the cash leg, the part of an institutional trade that still moves on the banking calendar rather than the market's.

Qualified custody's real contest now sits in bank-linked clearing, which keeps the meeting point of cash and positions inside supervised rails, the direction the industry and its regulators have been moving, and the first step here is deliberately narrow—one currency, a hand-picked client list, two regions. Watch the currency list. The first non-dollar corridor Payward and SGB add, and the first client outside the initial cohort, will say more about the service's reach than this week's launch does.