Payward, the US$21-billion parent company of American crypto-trading giant Kraken, plans to apply for “every licence known to man” in Canada, potentially including a banking licence, co-CEO Arjun Sethi told The Logic.

Kraken is best known for crypto trading, but Sethi said he sees the company as a provider of global financial infrastructure of all kinds. He said Kraken has 120 regulatory licences around the world, including a specialized banking licence in Wyoming and a pending acquisition of a bank in Lithuania. Sethi said “it’s not inconceivable we would do the same thing” in Canada, although Kraken currently has no firm plans to pursue a banking licence under a new program that fast tracks applications from fintechs.

Licence and registration, please: Kraken definitely has its eye on at least two regulatory licences in Canada. Kraken Canada public policy lead Sophia Cote said the company is on track to become a member of the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) by April 2027, when an exemption that lets it operate as a securities dealer with some restrictions runs out. Sethi said Kraken wants to offer broker dealer services, tokenized stocks, blockchain and other infrastructure to Canadian fintechs and banks. Asked which Canadian banks and other traditional finance players Kraken is targeting, Sethi said “we have talked to all of them.” Kraken is also pursuing a licence as a payment services provider with the Bank of Canada, Cote said.

Yielding to reality: Sethi said he thinks the draft federal regulations released last week that will govern stablecoins, crypto assets pegged to the value of a central bank issued currency, are “a step in the right direction.” The regulations soften a proposed ban on yield or interest paid on stablecoin balances, letting crypto platforms offer programs similar to credit card rewards that are based on transactions rather than passive holdings. Sethi said he considers Canada to be “right in the middle” on crypto regulations compared to its global peers. Kraken is waiting to see the final regulations before deciding whether it can continue its stablecoin rewards programs in Canada, which it offers to holders of the American-dollar stablecoin USDC and Canadian-dollar stablecoin QCAD, Sethi said.

Agentic play: A number of Canada’s big banks announced earlier this week that they’re blocking AI agents from accessing customer accounts, but Sethi said Kraken is taking the opposite approach. If Kraken customers want to deploy external AI agents to download their data from the platform or even trade on their behalf, “we let you do that all day long,” he said. Kraken has guardrails that ensure AI agents operate in accordance with the platform’s rules and security standards, he added. Sethi said banks have legitimate concerns about who’s liable if an AI agent goes rogue or makes a mistake, but ultimately, they “have to get ready for it.”

IPO delays: Kraken put its planned initial public offering on hold in March and CoinDesk reported in September that the company is now targeting the second quarter of 2027 at the earliest in an effort to wait out a challenging market. Sethi said Kraken still wants to go public, but has no firm timeline for doing so. He said the company has a long list of things it wants to get done first, including creating a robust market for blockchain-based stock trading and detailing the company’s five-year plan for customers. “Until we’re ready to do that, we just don’t have any timelines around what we think public markets look like,” he said.