Deutsche Börse has deepened its partnership with US crypto exchange Kraken, inking a $200 million investment in Payward, the unified infrastructure layer behind the platform.
The exchange operator acquired the stake through a secondary transaction, giving it 1.5% on a fully diluted basis.
The move builds on the firms’ December 2025 plan to combine their strengths across trading, custody, settlement, collateral management and tokenised assets. The aim is to create a bridge between traditional financial markets and the digital‑asset economy, offering institutional clients seamless access to both.
As the group’s CSD, Clearstream will handle issuance, safekeeping and settlement of tokenised assets, anchoring them in the regulated post‑trade environment while Kraken provides crypto‑native liquidity and distribution. The partnership is designed to move digital‑asset use cases beyond PoCs and into live, scalable production, with Clearstream’s infrastructure enabling regulated processing of assets “of any technical form” within a unified liquidity pool.
Completion of the transaction is expected in Q2.
