KRAKEN’S PARENT PAYWARD SIGNS A DEAL TO BUY LITHUANIA’S SALDO BANK — DEPOSITS, LOANS AND CARDS FOR EU CLIENTS — THE ANNOUNCEMENT NEVER MENTIONS BITCOIN

Payward, the company behind Kraken, signed a definitive agreement on October 14, 2026 to buy Saldo Finance Oy, the Finnish holding company that owns Saldo Bank. Saldo Bank is licensed by the European Central Bank, regulated by the Bank of Lithuania, and works in Lithuania, Finland, Sweden and Germany with a passport into the Netherlands. Terms weren’t disclosed. Closing is expected in 2027, after regulators sign off.

Payward says it wants to offer European clients interest on deposits, lending and banking-as-a-service. “A regulated EU bank is the piece that lets us serve European clients the way a primary financial institution should,” co-CEO Arjun Sethi said. CoinDesk puts Saldo’s total assets at €163.9 million at the end of 2025, and the Financial Times reports it would make Payward the first crypto firm to buy a bank in Europe.

Read the release looking for bitcoin and you won’t find it. Not once. The deal is about deposits and loans, which is what banks do, and a deposit is the bank’s promise to pay you back. Coins left on an exchange sit on the same kind of promise.

None of that is a knock on the deal. A licensed bank with euro rails is useful, and Payward has also applied for a U.S. national trust bank charter. It’s just worth knowing which product you’re holding. A bank balance is a claim on the bank. A bitcoin in your own wallet is yours. At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $81,712.