Payward, the parent company of US-based cryptocurrency exchange Kraken said it agreed to buy stablecoin-focused firm Reap for $600mn as crypto companies race to build out payments infrastructure.
The acquisition would be Payward's fifth in the last six months.
Reap is a Hong Kong-based payments platform that connects stablecoin settlement with traditional finance (TradFi) systems. Stablecoins are digital tokens typically pegged 1:1 to currencies like the US dollar.
The deal would add card issuing, global payments, and treasury services to Payward’s existing products, which so far include crypto trading, custody, and derivatives. Reap would continue to operate as a standalone platform after the deal closes, which is expected to be in the second half of 2026, pending regulatory approvals.
The purchase price is to be a mix of cash and stock, and values Payward at around $20bn, according to a press release viewed by Sandmark.
The move comes as the stablecoin sector continues to expand, with total market value reaching about $323bn, up from $307bn in January, according to DeFiLlama data.
Eneko Knorr, CEO and co-founder of DeFi company Stabolut, told Sandmark the deal highlights growing competition around stablecoin payments infrastructure.
"The stablecoin sector is smoking hot right now, and every major player is aggressively scrambling to lock down B2B payment infrastructure," Knorr said. "Nobody wants to be the one left without a chair when the music stops if you were to ask me. "
He added that stablecoins are increasingly being used for settlement, with major firms speeding to build out the underlying payment rails. "We are watching a full-blown arms race for stablecoin rails unfold in real-time, simply because none of the heavyweights want to be late to the party," Knorr said.
Meanwhile, Ryan Day, CMO of DeFi firm Solstice, told Sandmark that the deal also reflects a broader shift in crypto firms expanding beyond single products and into full financial stacks.
"Going from a consumer app all the way down to back-end infrastructure is the kind of play you see in maturing industries," Day said. "Apple owning the chip stack. Amazon building AWS. The strategic logic is the same: control the stack, capture margin at every layer, ship product faster than anyone leasing the same rails."
Similar strategies are emerging at other large platforms, including Coinbase and Robinhood, which have been expanding their product offerings.
Payward has been on an acquisition spree of sorts. On May 1, the company's Kraken unit completed its approximately $1.5bn acquisition of NinjaTrader, a retail futures trading platform.
Meanwhile, earlier this week, Payward finalized its $550mn acquisition of Bitnomial, a platform that offers spot margin, futures, options trading, and prediction markets in a single system – a deal aimed at strengthening Payward's derivatives offering in the US as Bitnomial is a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)-regulated derivatives exchange.
In January, Payward also completed the purchase of tokenized asset issuer Backed Financial AG for undisclosed terms and a month later bought Magna, a token management platform, again for undisclosed terms.
