Payward to buy Lithuania's Saldo Bank for EU banking license

Payward said on Oct. 14 that it agreed to acquire Lithuania-based Saldo Bank for an undisclosed amount.

The deal would give the Kraken parent an EU banking license and let it serve European customers with interest-bearing deposits, loans, card services and euro payments.

According to a Financial Times report cited by CoinDesk, the acquisition would make Payward the first crypto firm to buy a bank in Europe. The purchase price was not disclosed, and the transaction is subject to regulatory approval, with completion expected in 2027.

Saldo Bank held €163.9 million ($180 million) in total assets at the end of 2025, up 22.7% from a year earlier, according to The Banks. The lender is licensed in Lithuania, Finland, Sweden and Germany and holds a passport to operate in the Netherlands, the report says. Its business covers deposits, consumer and business loans, and payment services.

"A regulated EU bank is the piece that lets us serve European clients the way a primary financial institution should: one place to hold assets, move them freely, and put them to work," said Arjun Sethi, Payward's co-CEO.

Saldo's roughly $180 million of assets sit far below the more than $2 billion in loans Payward says its banking business has already originated. The two figures measure different things: one is a balance sheet at a point in time, the other cumulative lending. The company also holds an electronic money institution license in Ireland and limited access to the Federal Reserve's payment system through a limited-purpose master account, the report says.

The EU purchase sits alongside a separate U.S. build-out. Payward has applied for a national trust bank charter in the U.S., and CoinDesk reported in July that Kraken had been seeking a banking license in Lithuania. The Saldo agreement converts that search into a signed deal that would, on completion, bring deposits and lending under Payward's own charter.

With the Clarity Act dead in the Senate, the crypto rulebook is being written by agencies, foreign regulators and courts rather than by a single U.S. statute. Payward is now running both tracks in parallel, and the scopes differ: the Saldo deal is described as unlocking deposit-taking, lending, cards and euro payments, while the U.S. application is for a trust bank charter and the Fed access the company holds is described as limited.

Our September coverage described the company pricing a permissioned account so a U.S. institution could touch a public chain without leaving its compliance perimeter. Payward is also behind xStocks, whose planned listing on the London Stock Exchange would put the UK's 100 largest companies on a 24/5 venue.