Kraken Parent Payward Agrees to Buy Lithuania’s Saldo Bank

The notable element here is structure, not scale: a crypto-native parent buying a licensed bank, which points to a longer regulatory runway rather than a quick product launch. The 2027 closing target and pending approvals mean this is a multi-year bet on holding banking permissions inside the group, affecting how Payward can serve European clients over time. Whether other exchanges pursue similar bank acquisitions, and how regulators treat them, is the open question worth watching.