Payward Named to CNBC's World's Top Fintech Companies 2026

CHEYENNE, Wyo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Payward, the unified financial infrastructure platform behind a family of products including Kraken, has been recognized by CNBC as one of the World's Top Fintech Companies for 2026. The annual list, produced in partnership with a leading global research firm Statista, identifies the innovative companies shaping the future of financial technology worldwide.

About the recognition

Each year, CNBC and Statista evaluate the top fintech players across the globe — from early-stage startups to established institutions — spanning segments such as payments, neobanking, alternative financing, wealth technology, digital assets, enterprise fintech, insurtech, and regtech. Inclusion in the list is based on publicly available sources such as annual reports, company websites, and media monitoring across more than 2,000 eligible companies.

Being included on the 2026 list places Payward among an elite group of high-growth companies CNBC and Statista identify as defining where financial technology is heading.

Why Payward

Founded in 2011, Kraken began as a cryptocurrency exchange built around the highest standards of security and trust. Since then, the business has evolved into something greater: Payward, a parent company spanning a broader set of products and brands that bring digital assets and modern financial infrastructure to individuals and institutions.

Today that footprint includes Kraken’s spot and derivatives trading, staking, custody, and institutional services, alongside newer offerings that extend well beyond a traditional exchange: market-leading tokenized equities framework through xStocks, a global money app through Krak, regulated crypto indices through CF Benchmarks, equity derivatives from NinjaTrader, and crypto-native prop trading of Breakout. Recent acquisitions have added new companies across derivatives, payments, and token-operations capabilities to the platform, broadening the tools available to clients within the Payward family.

"We started as an exchange in 2011. What we're building now is the infrastructure that underpins an open, global financial system. Payward encompasses one liquidity pool, one risk and margin engine, one compliance framework that lets people hold, trade, earn, pay, and invest across asset classes without friction,” said Payward Co-CEO Arjun Sethi. “Recognition like this isn't about being on a list; it's a signal that the market and mainstream media sees where the future of finance is heading. Our focus is the same as it's always been: getting the foundation right so it scales for the clients and innovative use cases that come next."

Payward earned the recognition less than a year after unveiling this brand and corporate structure, a rapid ascent for a platform that only recently consolidated its products as a single infrastructure layer.

About Payward

Payward, Inc. is a unified financial infrastructure platform that powers a family of products advancing an open, global financial system. Built on a single shared architecture, Payward enables customers to hold, trade, earn, pay, and invest across asset classes without friction or fragmentation.

At its core, Payward provides the infrastructure layer behind Kraken and a growing set of purpose-built products, including NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, and CF Benchmarks.

Payward separates infrastructure from product expression. Each product surface is designed for a specific customer segment, regulatory regime, and use case, while operating on the same global foundation:
One global liquidity pool
One unified risk and margin engine
One collateral and settlement system
One compliance and licensing framework

This shared architecture allows Payward to scale efficiently, launch new products at low marginal cost, and serve diverse global markets while maintaining consistent risk management, regulatory integrity, and operational resilience.

For more information about Payward, please visit www.payward.com