BNY reportedly discusses infrastructure partnership with Kraken parent Payward

Custody bank BNY is in talks with Payward about a broad partnership spanning digital assets and financial-market infrastructure, according to two people familiar with the matter. Payward is the Wyoming-based parent company of crypto exchange Kraken. The potential agreement could cover crypto products, custody, wealth management, trading, payments and infrastructure, the people said. Payward provides these offerings through Payward Services, its business-to-business platform for banks, exchanges and asset managers. One person said elements of the proposed partnership could resemble the infrastructure component of Payward's recent commercial agreement with Nasdaq. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are private. Discussions are ongoing, and there is no guarantee an agreement will be reached. Payward and BNY declined to comment. A deal with BNY would further Payward's push to connect its digital-asset operations with established financial institutions. BNY, formerly known as Bank of New York Mellon, provides custody, asset servicing, clearing and wealth-management services to institutional clients. BNY has also been developing tokenized deposits designed to support near-real-time onchain settlement between institutional market participants. The development is part of BNY's broader push into digital-asset infrastructure.