Crypto02 October, 20262 min read
BNY Mellon Negotiates Infrastructure Alliance With Payward, Kraken Parent, For Digital Asset Services
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BNY Mellon in talks with Payward to form broad digital-asset and market-infrastructure partnership. Potential deal could cover custody, trading, payments, wealth management, and infrastructure.
BNY eyes Payward alliance
BNY Mellon is in negotiations with Payward, the parent company of Kraken, over an infrastructure alliance that would cover services related to digital assets, including custody, trading, payments, and other market infrastructure. BNY Mellon’s potential collaboration with Payward would integrate BNY’s digital asset custody with Payward’s technology, allowing BNY clients to access secure and regulated custody for investments in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other tokens.
The discussions also contemplate allowing BNY clients to trade directly on the cryptocurrency market through Kraken’s platform, and the alliance would consider using Payward’s payments infrastructure to facilitate cryptocurrency transactions within BNY’s banking network. BNY Mellon’s talks with Payward remain described as ongoing, with one report saying the agreement could still end without an agreement, and both Payward and BNY declined to comment.
Scope, platforms, and timelines
CoinDesk-linked reporting says the potential deal could span crypto products, custody, wealth management, trading, payments and infrastructure offered through Payward Services, the company’s business-to-business platform for banks, exchanges and asset managers. CoinDesk-linked reporting also says parts of the proposed partnership could resemble the infrastructure component of Payward’s recent agreement with Nasdaq, which focuses on advancing tokenized equities and always-on market infrastructure.
Nasdaq Ventures agreed in September to invest $100 million in Payward while expanding an existing collaboration around tokenized equities, and the companies expect to launch Nasdaq Equity Tokens in the second quarter of 2027. Payward’s xStocks infrastructure is described as connecting Nasdaq’s tokenized equities framework with its xStocks infrastructure, and Payward would adopt Nasdaq’s market-surveillance technology across its trading venues.
What could change next
BNY Mellon’s reported tokenized-deposit work is described as creating blockchain records that mirror participating clients’ existing deposit balances, with the digital entries representing clients’ demand deposit claims against BNY. One report says the system runs on a private, permissioned blockchain while balances continue to appear in the bank’s traditional records for regulatory and reporting purposes, and it adds that BNY identified rules-based, near-real-time cash movement as a future objective for institutional clients.
Payward’s broader platform is described as spanning spot crypto trading, derivatives, tokenized equities, custody, staking, payments and traditional securities, with Payward Services providing infrastructure to banks, fintechs, brokerages and payment companies. The negotiations are framed as a step toward connecting Payward’s digital-asset operations with established financial institutions, while the reports also emphasize that the talks remain ongoing and may not result in a deal.