Payward Signs Deal to Acquire EU-Licensed Saldo Bank in Crypto's First European Commercial Bank Purchase
Payward Signs Deal to Acquire EU-Licensed Saldo Bank in Crypto’s First European Commercial Bank Purchase #
Payward Inc., the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Saldo Finance Oy, the Finnish holding company that owns Lithuania-licensed Saldo Bank UAB. The deal, announced October 14, 2026, would give Payward a full EU banking licence and, if completed, would be the first acquisition of a European commercial bank by a digital-asset firm.
No purchase price was disclosed. Closing is expected in 2027, pending regulatory approval from the Bank of Lithuania and other relevant authorities.
Saldo Bank holds a specialised banking licence in Lithuania, where it is supervised by the Bank of Lithuania and licensed by the European Central Bank. The bank operates across four European markets (Lithuania, Finland, Sweden, and Germany) and holds passporting rights to extend services into the Netherlands. Its products include retail term deposits, consumer and SME lending, credit card issuance, and embedded lending infrastructure for fintech partners.
For Payward, the acquisition is an extension of its Payward Banking division, which the company describes as the “money layer” of its broader financial infrastructure platform. Payward Banking has already originated more than $2 billion in loans and holds regulated infrastructure including a Federal Reserve limited-purpose master account in the United States and an electronic money institution licence from the Central Bank of Ireland.
Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said the acquisition follows a deliberate, market-by-market approach to building regulated banking capabilities. “Whoever has the right to deposit, lend to, and issue payment instruments to a customer owns the relationship,” Sethi said, citing control of a regulated balance sheet in Europe as strategically important.
Once the transaction closes, Payward expects to offer European clients interest-bearing deposits, secured and unsecured consumer credit, SME lending, and banking-as-a-service capabilities such as card issuance and SEPA payment access. One feature under consideration would allow customers to borrow against crypto or tokenised stock holdings as collateral without liquidating those positions, a product Sethi said existing clients have actively requested.
Jarkko Mäensivu, President of Saldo Bank, said the bank’s infrastructure was designed from the outset for pan-European deployment, including embedded services for third-party fintech companies. He described the combination of Saldo’s five-market footprint and Payward’s platform as enabling “banking, payments and lending in one place” for a wider customer base.
Earlier in 2026, Payward disclosed it was evaluating full banking licences outside the United States. Acquiring Saldo bypasses the multi-year timeline typically associated with a de-novo licence application.
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