Payward, the financial infrastructure company behind Kraken, has integrated Singapore Gulf Bank’s real-time clearing network to give selected institutional clients 24/7 U.S. dollar settlement, narrowing one of the biggest timing gaps between traditional banking and always-on crypto markets.
The service connects Payward with SGB Net, Singapore Gulf Bank’s real-time multi-currency clearing system. It initially covers U.S. dollar transactions for a select group of institutional clients in eligible jurisdictions across Asia and the Gulf, with both companies planning to add more customers and currencies over time.
Once funds are inside the connected network, an SGB customer can transfer money to Payward and deploy it immediately rather than waiting for a banking day or conventional settlement window.
Singapore Gulf Bank will also connect with Kraken Prime, Payward’s institutional prime brokerage business, using its digital-asset liquidity to support pricing and trading services for the bank’s own customers.
The companies did not disclose the number of institutions taking part in the initial rollout or the transaction volume expected to move through the connection.
Payward Targets the Weekend Gap Between Cash and Crypto
The problem the companies are addressing is straightforward: cryptocurrency markets trade continuously, but much of the fiat infrastructure funding institutional trading still operates around banking days and cut-off times.
Bitcoin can move sharply on a Saturday night. An institutional desk can trade it immediately. Moving fresh dollars through conventional banking rails to support that trade may be much harder.
Mark Greenberg, Payward’s chief commercial officer, summarized the mismatch by saying, “Settlement stops when the business day does, while their markets do not.”
Through the Payward and Singapore Gulf Bank partnership, clients already connected to SGB Net can make their fiat liquidity available to Payward around the clock.
That can reduce the need for institutions to forecast weekend funding requirements and pre-position larger cash balances across trading venues simply because traditional banking infrastructure might not be available when markets move.
The service should not, however, be interpreted as making the entire banking system operate 24/7. The advantage exists within the participating infrastructure. Institutions still need funds available inside the relevant banking and Payward relationships before those dollars can move continuously through the network.
SGB Net Has Grown Into a $20 Billion-a-Month Fiat Network
Singapore Gulf Bank launched SGB Net in May 2025 as a real-time clearing system for digital-asset businesses, including exchanges, stablecoin issuers, market makers, OTC desks and prime brokers.
The bank says the network now handles more than $20 billion in fiat transaction volume every month.
SGB is regulated as a conventional wholesale bank by the Central Bank of Bahrain and is backed by Bahrain sovereign wealth fund Mumtalakat and Singapore-based Whampoa Group.
The bank has been steadily pushing its infrastructure deeper into digital assets. Earlier in 2026, it expanded SGB Net to bring fiat currencies and stablecoins into the same regulated platform, including support for assets such as USDT and USDC.
That strategy reflects a broader shift toward cross-border settlement infrastructure in which banks and regulated financial companies are trying to preserve the controls of traditional finance while removing some of its operating-hour constraints.
Kraken Prime Becomes Part of the Bank’s Liquidity Stack
The partnership runs in both directions.
Payward gains access to a banking network capable of moving institutional dollars continuously, while Singapore Gulf Bank gains another source of digital-asset liquidity through Kraken Prime.
Kraken Prime provides institutional execution, custody and financing and aggregates liquidity across more than 20 providers. Payward says the service reaches more than 90% of global digital-asset liquidity through its connected venues.
SGB plans to use Payward’s markets to help price trades for its customers over the coming months.
The arrangement therefore brings the cash and trading sides closer together. Instead of treating banking, exchange funding and crypto execution as separate workflows, an institution can potentially move dollars through SGB Net and access liquidity through Payward without waiting for the next banking session.
Payward Is Becoming Much More Than Kraken
The deal also makes more sense when viewed against Payward’s wider strategy.
The company increasingly presents the infrastructure behind Kraken as a product that other financial institutions can use rather than technology built exclusively for its own exchange.
Payward Services now offers trading, funding, stablecoin payments, tokenized assets, custody and other financial infrastructure to exchanges, fintechs, banks and asset managers.
In September, Payward entered a similar arrangement with SoFi that gave it access to the bank’s 24/7 U.S. dollar settlement network while Kraken Prime became a liquidity provider for SoFi’s crypto offering.
Nasdaq Ventures also agreed in September to invest $100 million in Payward as the companies expanded work on tokenized equities and always-on market infrastructure. Separately, Payward and the London Stock Exchange are working on tokenized UK equities and potential 24-hour trading infrastructure.
Reports last week also said BNY was holding preliminary discussions with Payward over a possible relationship spanning digital assets, custody, trading, payments and financial-market infrastructure. The talks have not been announced as a completed transaction.
Always-On Markets Need Always-On Cash
The most interesting part of the SGB agreement is that nothing about it requires a new cryptocurrency.
Crypto spent years trying to solve settlement problems by putting dollars on blockchains. Stablecoins remain one of the strongest solutions to that problem, and investment continues flowing into stablecoin payment infrastructure.
But institutions do not suddenly stop using bank deposits because stablecoins exist.
Asset managers, trading firms, OTC desks and corporate treasuries still have large amounts of conventional fiat sitting in regulated bank accounts. For those clients, improving how bank money moves may be just as valuable as converting everything into an on-chain dollar.
That creates two competing paths toward always-on finance.
One path puts more money directly on-chain. Companies such as Telcoin are experimenting with on-chain bank accounts that connect regulated banking directly with blockchain-based dollars.
The other path modernizes conventional bank money so that it behaves more like digital assets: instant, programmable and available outside normal business hours.
SGB Net belongs primarily to the second category.
The Biggest Benefit May Be Lower Pre-Funding Requirements
For an institutional trading desk, the real economic benefit is not simply being able to send dollars on Sunday.
It is potentially having to keep less idle capital sitting in advance at exchanges and counterparties.
Imagine a fund trades on several venues. If banking rails shut for the weekend, the fund may need to estimate how much liquidity it could require and pre-fund those accounts before Friday cut-offs.
That capital cannot easily be used somewhere else while it waits.
A real-time bank-to-trading connection changes that equation. The institution can theoretically keep more liquidity centralized and move it closer to the moment when it is actually needed.
That can improve capital efficiency, particularly during volatile periods when crypto markets move sharply outside traditional banking hours.
It can also reduce counterparty exposure. Leaving less money sitting permanently at individual trading venues means less capital is exposed if one venue encounters operational or financial problems.
The Model Still Depends on Network Effects
There is an important limitation.
A private real-time settlement network is only as useful as the institutions connected to it.
If a fund’s bank, exchange, liquidity provider or counterparty sits outside the network, some of the old friction remains.
That is why the $20 billion monthly SGB Net volume matters. The more exchanges, market makers, banks and payments companies connected to a common settlement layer, the more useful the network becomes.
This same network-effect race is emerging across digital payments. Visa, Mastercard and Stripe have all been expanding their roles in blockchain settlement, a trend examined in Dave Finances’ analysis of how major payment companies are approaching stablecoins.
Payward appears to be taking a deliberately network-agnostic approach. It can connect to stablecoins, tokenized assets and crypto markets while simultaneously plugging into bank-operated settlement systems such as SGB Net and SoFi’s network.
Payward Is Building the Plumbing Between Banks and 24/7 Markets
This is ultimately why the Singapore Gulf Bank partnership matters more than another bank integration for Kraken.
Payward is positioning itself between two financial systems that operate on fundamentally different clocks.
On one side are crypto, tokenized equities and other markets moving toward continuous trading. On the other are banks, cash accounts and settlement processes still heavily influenced by business days and cut-off times.
The company does not need traditional banking to disappear for its infrastructure strategy to work. It needs banks to become easier to connect to markets that never close.
Singapore Gulf Bank is doing exactly that.
The first rollout is still limited: selected clients, selected jurisdictions and U.S. dollars only. No transaction forecasts have been disclosed, and the companies still need to prove that institutions will shift meaningful funding activity onto the connection.
But if the model scales across currencies and banking partners, the competitive advantage becomes obvious.
The institutional crypto market has largely solved 24/7 trading. The next infrastructure race is making the money funding those trades just as available.
Johan Shamshad is a financial markets writer at Dave Finances covering cryptocurrencies, trading platforms, brokers, fintech, financial regulation, and developments across global markets. He previously worked at Gulf News, adding newsroom experience to his coverage of fast-moving financial and digital-asset markets.
His work focuses on identifying market-moving events, company developments, regulatory changes, product launches, and shifts in trading and financial infrastructure.
Johan contributes news and analysis designed to help readers understand not only what happened, but why a development matters and how it may affect the wider financial landscape.