Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, and fintech company SoFi Technologies on Thursday announced a deal to route SoFi customers’ crypto orders through Kraken’s institutional trading platform and list SoFi’s stablecoin on the exchange.
Under the agreement, SoFi will send its digital asset order flow to Kraken Prime, Kraken’s prime brokerage arm, which launched in 2025.
Rather than filling trades against a single order book, Kraken Prime uses smart order routing to compare prices and depth across multiple venues and execute where the fill is best. SoFi said customers will see no change to the app itself.
Payward is also joining the SoFi Exchange Network, the bank’s real-time settlement system, and will list SoFiUSD — SoFi’s bank-issued stablecoin — on Kraken.
Kraken Prime’s institutional and business clients will in turn gain access to SoFi’s business banking services and round-the-clock fiat settlement. The companies said qualified custody services would follow later.
SoFi holds a national bank charter and has 15.8 million members. The partnership is the latest in a series of tie-ups between Kraken and established financial firms, following arrangements with Deutsche Börse on foreign exchange and derivatives infrastructure, Nasdaq on a tokenized equities gateway, and Franklin Templeton on tokenizing exchange-traded funds.
The news comes after SoFi, a purely digital lender, last year became the first nationally chartered bank in the United States to launch crypto services for retail customers.
The company’s new SoFi crypto platform allows members to buy, sell and hold bitcoin directly within their bank accounts.
Kraken — like other crypto exchanges — is pushing into the traditional finance world, allowing users to trade stocks, bonds and other assets. The company has sold its app as a “primary account for everything.”