Payward integrated Singapore Gulf Bank’s settlement network, giving institutional clients access to 24/7 cross-border settlement using digital assets. The bank will also use the Kraken Prime platform as an additional source of liquidity.
Payward, the FinTech infrastructure platform that powers the Kraken crypto exchange, announced a strategic partnership with Singapore Gulf Bank (SGB), a digital bank licensed and regulated by the Central Bank of Bahrain. Under the agreement, Payward integrated SGB Net, the bank’s real-time, multi-currency clearing network.
The integration of SGB Net with Payward’s infrastructure will allow institutional clients to:
settle cross-border transactions around the clock, including on weekends;
transfer funds from SGB to Payward and use them as soon as they’re credited;
access Kraken Prime liquidity;
use Payward’s markets for pricing digital asset transactions.
Initially, the 24/7 settlement service is available only to a limited number of institutional clients and supports transactions in U.S. dollars only. The partners plan to expand access to more clients and add other currencies. The solution is aimed at clients in Asia and the Gulf region and will be available in select jurisdictions.
SGB launched SGB Net in 2025 for companies operating in the digital asset sector. The network now processes more than $20 billion in fiat transactions each month.
The partnership also includes SGB’s integration with Kraken Prime, Payward’s full-service prime brokerage platform. The bank will use the platform as an additional source of liquidity for its own digital asset products. In the coming months, SGB will begin using Payward’s markets to price its clients’ transactions.
According to Payward Chief Commercial Officer Mark Greenberg, traditional banking infrastructure remains a constraint for crypto exchanges, payment companies, over-the-counter trading providers, and FinTech platforms because standard settlement processes stop at the end of the banking day, while digital asset trading continues around the clock.
SGB CEO Shawn Chan said access to liquidity has practical value only when funds can be moved quickly. The integration of SGB Net with Payward and access to Kraken Prime are expected to combine settlement infrastructure and liquidity, giving institutional clients more options for funding and managing digital asset operations.
The agreement is part of the development of Payward Banking, the financial infrastructure layer of the Payward platform, which is working to introduce innovations across deposit placement, payments, card transactions, asset custody, and lending. The company previously integrated its trading and payments infrastructure with SoFi Technologies and began a phased integration with the U.S. Federal Reserve System.
