Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, has applied for a national trust charter with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, co-CEO Arjun Sethi wrote Friday in a blog post.
The charter, if approved, would establish Payward National Trust Co., which would provide fiduciary custody and other services for crypto.
Kraken is one of several crypto firms to seek a national trust charter over the past year under Comptroller Jonathan Gould. Several including Ripple, Paxos, Crypto.com and Coinbase have been successful in their pursuits.
Payward said a national trust charter would complement its special-purpose depository institution, Kraken Financial, which recently became the first crypto firm to receive a Federal Reserve master account.
“Kraken Financial and what we are building with the OCC are complementary pillars of Payward’s regulated banking strategy aimed at advancing an efficient and accessible digitally native financial system,” Sethi wrote Friday.
Some banking groups, however, have taken issue with the OCC’s interpretation of national trust charter licensing rules. The Bank Policy Institute is considering a lawsuit against the OCC that would prevent it from issuing national trust charters to crypto firms, a source familiar with the matter told The Guardian in March.
The Independent Community Bankers of America in April expressed concerns with the OCC’s final chartering rule for national trust banks, which the organization’s president, Rebeca Romero Rainey, said “is inconsistent with its statutory authority laid out in legislative history, judicial interpretations, and the agency’s own internal precedent.”
Payward, for its part, believes that “the right path forward for digital assets runs through robust, transparent regulation,” Sethi said Friday.
“A national trust company provides the certainty institutions require and establishes the infrastructure to build the next generation of custody,” Sethi said. “This is not about being first; it is about getting the framework right so markets can scale with clarity, interoperability, and long-term vision for what clients will demand as these systems mature.”
PNTC said it expects to serve institutional clients and individual customers seeking “regulated, bank-level custody and trust services” for digital assets.
Kraken has been a newsmaker this year, filing for an initial public offering, Sethi said last month, and buying payments infrastructure company Reap for $600 million last week. The firm made several high-dollar acquisitions in 2025.