Overview
- Payward, which filed Friday with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, seeks approval to form Payward National Trust Company to handle digital-asset custody.
- If approved, the national trust company would operate under federal oversight and serve clients that require a qualified custodian for cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.
- The planned trust would work alongside Kraken Financial, a Wyoming crypto bank that holds a Federal Reserve master account, creating coverage across state and federal charters.
- The application follows a $600 million deal to buy Reap Technologies and extends an acquisition push that reports say totals about $2.7 billion over roughly a year.
- The filing lands as the OCC has recently moved forward on multiple crypto trust-charter bids, with outlets noting actions since December that include firms like Circle, Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, Paxos, Bridge, Crypto.com, and Zerohash.