Kraken’s parent company wants a place in your finances long before you buy Bitcoin and long after you sell it. On Oct. 14, Payward agreed to acquire Saldo Finance Oy, the Finnish owner of Lithuania’s Saldo Bank, in a deal expected to close in 2027 if regulators approve it.
The purchase would add deposit accounts, lending and payment services to a group better known for handling crypto trades, extending the banking push.
Putting a customer’s salary, savings and Bitcoin holdings into a future Payward app could make them look like parts of one account, but that wouldn’t make the money equally protected.
Eligible deposits at Saldo Bank, electronic-money balances with an existing Kraken payments entity, and Bitcoin held through a custody service all represent different legal relationships, even when their values are all displayed in euros.
People receive salaries, pay bills, and keep savings whether Bitcoin is having an exciting month or doing very little, which is why Payward wants to serve customers beyond trading.
The purchase also brings a credit business whose audited accounts show that loans more than 90 days overdue more than doubled in 2025, making the quality of Saldo’s lending as relevant to the acquisition as its deposit license.
Meanwhile, customers need to know when moving money between products also moves it between companies, and when the protection on one balance stops applying to the next.
Follow a €3,000 paycheck through the app
Payward still hasn’t announced a salary account that combines all these products, so for now, we have to imagine a hypothetical customer receiving €3,000 a month and deciding where to keep it.
If the salary were paid directly into an eligible Saldo Bank account, the money would qualify for Lithuania’s statutory deposit-guarantee scheme, which generally protects up to €100,000 per depositor at that bank.
That limit applies to the customer’s combined eligible deposits with the institution, not separately to every product or screen in an app.
Saldo’s depositor information explains the aggregation rule, meaning someone with €90,000 in eligible savings and €20,000 in another eligible Saldo account would ordinarily have €100,000 covered across €110,000 of deposits.
Kraken’s existing safeguarding disclosure for EEA clients describes another arrangement: Payward Ireland Limited operates as an electronic-money institution, with relevant funds safeguarded rather than treated as bank deposits.
The institution says it separates that money from its own operating funds and restricts how it can be used, but customers don’t receive the same bank deposit guarantee when a protected electronic-money balance is returned through an insolvency process.
Customers of an eligible bank deposit rely on the statutory guarantee, subject to its terms, while electronic-money customers generally depend on the applicable process to identify and return money held under safeguarding arrangements, which can involve delays and costs.
The absence of an ordinary €100,000 deposit-insurance ceiling for safeguarded electronic money shouldn’t be mistaken for an unlimited government guarantee.
| Balance or asset | Relevant provider | What protects the customer | What could limit access |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eligible Saldo Bank deposit | Saldo Bank UAB | Lithuanian deposit guarantee, generally capped at €100,000 per depositor per institution | Deposit terms, including restrictions on early term-deposit withdrawals |
| Existing EEA electronic-money balance covered by Kraken’s safeguarding disclosure | Payward Ireland Limited | Safeguarding and the applicable insolvency process, not ordinary bank deposit insurance | Payment-service terms, administration and operational restrictions |
| Bitcoin held through a crypto custody service | Provider named in the custody agreement | Applicable custody, segregation and insolvency rules, without deposit insurance against Bitcoin price losses | Withdrawal terms, custody controls and network conditions |
Sources: Saldo’s depositor disclosure and Kraken’s EEA safeguarding explanation. These describe existing products.
Spending €100 of that paycheck on Bitcoin would replace the customer’s euro-denominated claim with exposure to crypto.
Deposit insurance wouldn’t reimburse a loss caused by Bitcoin falling in price, and selling the asset back into euros comes with its own contractual detail: the proceeds would need to land either as electronic money or as a qualifying bank deposit before the corresponding protections applied.
Kraken still has to explain where a salary would first be received, which entity would issue payment details, and how money would travel between an eventual bank product and existing Kraken services.
Those are important distinctions, because the legal counterparty, withdrawal conditions, and insolvency treatment can be different at each step without the customer ever leaving the same branded interface.
Kraken’s optional European Unified Wallet already has a separate account-level distinction: opting into cross margin can expose eligible spot assets to derivatives losses, a trading risk that shouldn’t be confused with deposit protection.
Payward is buying a lender, not just a banking license for Kraken
Payward would also inherit a conventional banking business whose finances depend on borrowers repaying their loans.
Saldo Bank’s June 2026 financial report lists €196.9 million in assets, €169.4 million in retail deposits and a €129.5 million gross credit portfolio, meaning the acquisition adds a loan book alongside the banking license and deposit customers.
Its audited 2025 accounts show assets of about €162.9 million and retail deposits of €136.9 million at the end of last year. By June, those balances were about 21% and 24% higher, respectively, making the cost of attracting deposits and the performance of newer loans central to understanding what Payward is buying.
Between December and June, retail deposits rose by €32.5 million, while gross credit exposure increased by about €5.8 million, or 4.7%. The bank may be doing everything from building liquidity for new lending and shifting its funding mix to holding more cash as existing loans mature.
Its balance sheet numbers show that deposit accumulation and loan expansion aren’t the same when estimating the earnings Payward could eventually earn.
| Saldo Bank measure | June 2026 bank-only filing |
|---|---|
| Total assets | €196.887 million |
| Retail deposits | €169.414 million |
| Gross credit portfolio | €129.533 million |
| Allowance against the credit portfolio | €11.452 million |
| Operating profit before impairment losses | €5.706 million |
| Credit impairment expense | €6.251 million |
| Net loss | €545,000 |
| Capital adequacy ratio | 19.0% |
Source: Saldo Bank’s June 2026 report. Balance sheet figures are as of June 30; income and expense figures cover the reported period. The numbers shown are only for the bank.
Saldo’s operating profit before impairment losses of €5.7 million was outweighed by €6.25 million in credit-loss expense, producing a €545,000 net loss in the reported period.
The audited figures show an 18.5% expansion of its gross loan book, from €104.4 million to €123.8 million, while loans at least 90 days overdue increased almost 118%, from €1.615 million to €3.514 million.
Their share of gross loans rose from about 1.55% to 2.84%, a more informative comparison than the overdue total alone because it accounts for the larger book.
| Bank-only measure | December 2024 | December 2025 | June 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gross loans | €104.443m | €123.777m | €129.533m |
| Loans 90+ days overdue | €1.615m | €3.514m | Not established from available figures |
| 90+ days overdue as share of gross loans | 1.55% | 2.84% | Not established |
| Loan-loss allowance | €9.008m | €10.287m | €11.452m |
| Allowance as share of gross loans | 8.62% | 8.31% | 8.84% |
| Net annual or reported-period profit | -€2.391m | €0.962m | -€0.545m |
Calculated from Saldo’s audited 2025 accounts, including the loan arrears table, and its June 2026 bank-only disclosure. The 2024 and 2025 earnings cover full years; the June result covers the period reported to June 30 and isn’t a directly comparable full-year figure. Allowances are not the same as overdue amounts.
Neither the number of overdue accounts nor their aggregate value alone identifies a permanent loss, because borrowers can catch up, and collateral or recoveries can reduce what a bank ultimately loses.
Still, the comparison explains why the €11.45 million impairment allowance deserves attention alongside a balance sheet that otherwise appears to be expanding rapidly.
That allowance represented about 8.84% of gross loans in June, up from 8.31% at the end of 2025, while credit-loss expense exceeded operating profit before impairment in the June filing.
The bank also reported a 19% capital adequacy ratio and a liquidity coverage ratio of 1,957.2%. Capital absorbs losses, while the liquidity ratio measures resources available against a defined stress-outflow measure.
Kraken’s customer base could eventually help the bank attract more deposits and loan applicants, but that would introduce ordinary banking obligations rather than give the group an unrestricted pool of customer money to fund its other businesses.
Every new loan would need to be underwritten, priced and supported by regulatory capital, with the bank answerable for its own liabilities even though the parent owns other financial companies.
Another difference exists between buying a deposit franchise and buying a profitable lending operation. Saldo reported €10.4 million in operating profit before loan impairments for 2025, but €9.36 million in impairment expense absorbed about 90% of it, leaving just €962,000 in net annual profit after tax.
Its first reported period of 2026 reversed that result, so Payward would inherit a bank with an identifiable revenue business and a sensitive credit-cost line.
One logo doesn’t turn three contracts into one
Payward’s announced plans include interest-bearing deposits, consumer and business lending, card products, and banking services for other financial companies, including payment and issuance capabilities.
Combining these services could give Payward steadier business than transaction fees alone, because customers use bank accounts and payment services through quiet trading periods as well as busy ones.
Payward has also connected to Singapore Gulf Bank’s institutional dollar-payment network, while Nasdaq agreed to invest $100 million in the group.
Saldo’s lending operations could generate interest income, but expanding that loan book makes underwriting costs, loan losses, and funding rates as important as the number of new customers signing up.
Common ownership wouldn’t make Saldo Bank a guarantor of balances owed by a different Payward company, nor would it let an affiliate borrow customer deposits outside the rules applying to bank exposures and related-party transactions.
Whether transfers between these businesses feel effortless to customers will have little bearing on who legally owes the money and how repayment works if one entity enters insolvency.
The hypothetical employee receiving €3,000 would need to know the name of the institution accepting the money, whether it becomes a deposit or electronic money, the coverage already used by any other accounts at that bank, and the conditions for getting it back at every transfer.
Payward hasn’t published the terms of this integrated salary product, so the path a customer’s paycheck would take remains an open item for the company to specify before launch.