Kraken Parent Payward Breaks Trading Reliance as Services and Custody Drive Q3 Margin

Kraken parent Payward is decoupling its profitability from the crypto trading cycle. In the third quarter, client assets and enterprise services generated 52% of the group’s core margin, eclipsing trading commissions for the first time.

The Shift from Churn to Custody

The structural shift helped Payward nearly triple its adjusted EBITDA to $60 million from $23 million in the second quarter, even as platform trading volumes remained 30% below year-earlier levels.

While trade matching remains central to Kraken’s brand, transaction fees no longer form the majority of what the company retains from its operations.

Payward’s newly adopted performance metric, Total Platform Margin (TPM), captures this shift. It replaces the traditional "adjusted revenue" line and measures net intake after deducting direct trading costs and the staking yields paid out to clients.

For Q3, TPM reached $487 million, up 12% quarter-on-quarter, though still trailing Q3 2025 by 12%. The recovery came from asset-based margin, service and access fees and transaction margin.

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Assembling the B2B Infrastructure Ecosystem

The group is now focused on packaging its custody, settlement, and liquidity rails for third parties, as opposed to onboarding retail customers.

This shift from a retail crypto venue into a multi-asset infrastructure provider is reflected on Payward’s Q3 balance sheet During the quarter, Payward closed its acquisition of Reap, adding enterprise card issuance and payment rails.

In September, rival broker WOO X launched its European operations powered directly by Payward Services’ custody and backend. Simultaneously, a partnership with the London Stock Exchange laid the groundwork to bring UK-listed shares onto Payward’s tokenised xStocks platform.

Following the close of Q3, Payward agreed to acquire the parent of Lithuania-based Saldo Bank. Pending regulatory approvals through 2027, the deal will allow Payward to take European customer deposits directly onto its own regulated balance sheet..