Dollar settlement, the back-end process of finalizing money transfers between financial institutions, does not have to stop when conventional banking hours end. That premise sits at the center of a deal announced Thursday between SoFi Technologies and Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, connecting the two companies' financial infrastructure and adding SoFi's digital dollar token to Kraken's platform.
What was signed
Payward will join SoFi's dollar settlement system, formally called the SoFi Exchange Network, or SEN. Membership gives Kraken's institutional clients the ability to clear and settle U.S. dollar transactions at any time, a capacity the conventional banking system has not historically offered outside business hours.
SoFi will also tap Kraken Prime as an additional source of liquidity for crypto trades placed through the SoFi app. Liquidity here means the pool of available buyers and sellers that allows a trade to go through at a close-to-market price. Kraken Prime is a prime brokerage, meaning it provides services such as trade execution and custody to institutions and trading platforms rather than to individual retail customers. SoFi said the arrangement could improve trade pricing for its customers, though the companies framed that as a possibility. Qualified custody services may be added to the arrangement later.
Kraken will list SoFiUSD, SoFi's stablecoin, for retail, professional, and institutional customers. A stablecoin is a digital token designed to hold a fixed value against a traditional currency. In SoFiUSD's case, that currency is the U.S. dollar. "The financial system should not shut down when markets stay open," SoFi chief executive Anthony Noto said in a statement.
The path that led here
The deal reflects an active period of infrastructure building for both companies. Payward began considering a public offering for Kraken in March 2025, after the Securities and Exchange Commission agreed to dismiss its lawsuit against the exchange. In March 2026, Kraken Financial secured access to the Federal Reserve's payment systems. Days later, Payward formed a tokenized-equities partnership with Nasdaq.
SoFi's rebuild took a different shape. The company announced plans to return to crypto in June 2025, two years after ending its earlier offering. It began rolling out trading for as many as 30 crypto assets that November, with purchases funded directly from SoFi checking and savings accounts. SoFiUSD arrived in December as a tool for trading, payments, and business transfers, then expanded to the Solana blockchain in May 2026.