Payward Inc., the parent company of the Kraken crypto exchange, has acquired a Hong Kong-based stablecoin infrastructure amid rising adoption of these largely USD-dominated digital assets. Payward will be shelling out $600 million to purchase Reap Technologies, Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi confirmed on Thursday.
The acquisition of Reap will give Kraken a direct entry into the Asian market wherein it could start offering more stablecoin-related servcies and expand beyond its reputation of a crypto trading platform. Founded in 2018, Reap Technologies was initially launched as a fintech firm. Later, the company launched services including cross-border payments and stablecoin-enabled infrastructure.
In 2025, Asia outpaced North America and Europe in clocking high stablecoin engagement. As of early 2026, 60 percent of international stablecoin settlements reportedly originated out of Asia with transactions hitting approximately $245 billion.
In the last seven years, Reap positioned itself as a key player in bridging TradeFi with DeFi for business clients across markets including Hong Hong, Singapore, Mexico and other potential markets like Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Last year, the company had started rolling out Reap Cards as a “stablecoin-powered” corporate credit card to simplify cross-border settlements for businesses.
Kraken will now have better access to these markets that Reap has established itself in, without having to start from the scratch. Announcing the development, Kraken’s Sethi acknowledged this and said that the company’s next financial product will be deployed, not assembled.
“Finance is moving in one direction. Continuous markets. Programmable money. Autonomous execution. Stablecoins are the settlement substrate. AI agents are the new participants. We see the inflection on our own platform,” said Sethi. “Reap is the payments layer for what comes next. Card networks, banking rails, and blockchains on a single API, settling in stablecoins.”
“With the global stablecoin and crypto card market now exceeding $18 billion annually, Reap nearly tripled revenue and volumes in 2025, and expanded our licensing footprint from Asia to South America,” said Daren Guo, Co-Founder and CEO of Reap. “Joining Payward was a natural step to accelerate the future of finance and build category-disrupting offerings in web3, agentic commerce and more.”
The deal has been signed but remains subjected to regulatory approvals in Hong Kong.
This move aligns with Kraken’s high-growth trajectory and its ambitious spree of corporate takeovers. The firm has recently bolstered its market position with several high-profile deals, most notably the $1.5 billion purchase of NinjaTrader that it announced in March 2025.
This acquisition of Reap by Kraken has added to a growing list of crypto-centric acquisations in recent months. In March for instance, Mastercard acquired stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK for around $1.8 billion.
These developments clearly indicate that the global Web3 ecosystem is rapidly moving towards creating a more detailed network to expand the accessibility of digital assets amid the evolving regulatory landscape.
