Overview
- Payward, which filed with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Friday, proposed Payward National Trust Company to hold digital assets for clients.
- If approved, the trust would serve institutions that need a federally regulated qualified custodian and would not take deposits or make loans.
- Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said the filing complements Kraken Financial’s Wyoming charter and its March 2026 Federal Reserve master account that enables direct payment-rail access.
- The application arrives as the OCC issues conditional trust approvals to firms such as Ripple, Circle, Paxos, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Crypto.com, while Anchorage remains the only firm with a full national charter.
- Payward has been building a vertically integrated stack through deals for NinjaTrader and Bitnomial, which together add retail futures access and a CFTC-cleared derivatives platform alongside custody.