At a glance

  • Payward has signed a definitive agreement to buy Saldo Finance Oy, the Finnish holding company of Saldo Bank UAB, a digital bank licensed in Lithuania. The price was not disclosed.
  • Saldo takes term deposits in Lithuania, Finland, Sweden and Germany and holds a passport into the Netherlands. The deal needs regulatory approval.

Payward, the parent of crypto exchange Kraken, said on Wednesday it had agreed to acquire Saldo Bank, in a press release.

“A regulated EU bank is the piece that lets us serve European clients the way a primary financial institution should: one place to hold assets, move them freely, and put them to work,” said Arjun Sethi, Payward’s co-chief executive.

Saldo had €163.9 million ($180 million) of total assets at the end of 2025, CoinDesk reported, citing The Banks. Payward did not respond to CoinDesk’s question about the price. CoinDesk, citing the Financial Times, said the deal would make Payward the first crypto company to buy a bank in Europe.

Besides deposits, Saldo offers consumer loans in Lithuania, Finland and Sweden, small-business loans in Lithuania and Finland, and a credit card in Finland that it expects to launch in Sweden in 2027, Payward said. Fintech partners in Finland and Germany use its lending systems for their own customers. After closing, Payward plans to offer interest on deposits, loans, cards and euro payments over the SEPA network to its European clients, subject to approvals.

Payward already holds a limited-purpose master account at the US Federal Reserve and an e-money licence from the Central Bank of Ireland, and says its banking arm has originated more than $2 billion of loans. The Lithuanian licence is a banking licence, separate from the MiCA crypto authorisations explained in our MiCA explainer. The traffic also runs the other way: on Wednesday Standard Chartered said it would let UAE bank clients trade bitcoin and ether, as covered in our report on Standard Chartered in the UAE.

“A banking license is only as valuable as what you build on top of it,” said Jarkko Mäensivu, president of Saldo Bank.

The transaction is expected to close in 2027, once regulators have signed off, Payward said.

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This article is for information only and is not investment advice.