Payward, Kraken's parent company, integrated its infrastructure with SGB Net, Singapore Gulf Bank's real-time clearing network, to enable dollar settlement 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The service starts with selected institutional clients in Asia and the Gulf.
The partnership, announced on Monday (5), seeks to eliminate an important difference between the two markets: digital assets trade continuously, while traditional bank transfers still depend on cut-off times and business days.
Eligible clients of the bank will be able to deposit dollars with Payward and make the funds available for trading immediately, including outside banking hours. The offering is initially restricted to a few jurisdictions and is expected to expand to more clients and other currencies.
The service will not be offered, at this time, to Kraken's retail customers. The focus is institutions that need to move fiat currency between banks and digital asset markets without waiting for traditional settlement windows.
SGB Net moves more than US$ 20 billion per month
Launched in 2025, SGB Net currently processes more than US$ 20 billion per month in fiat currency transactions, according to Singapore Gulf Bank. The institution is regulated by the Central Bank of Bahrain.
The partnership will also work in the opposite direction. The bank will start using Kraken Prime, Payward's prime brokerage arm, as an additional source of liquidity for its digital asset operations.
In the coming months, Singapore Gulf Bank also intends to use Payward's markets as a reference for pricing its clients' trades.
The integration reinforces Payward's strategy of bringing its infrastructure closer to banking networks that operate continuously. In September, the company announced a similar partnership with SoFi in the United States for dollar movements by institutional clients throughout the day.
