Kraken parent Payward partners with GTN to scale xStocks internationally, beyond US equities

Kraken parent company Payward has partnered with fintech infrastructure provider GTN to expand its xStock tokenization offering across the globe, according to an announcement on Wednesday.

The collaboration will begin by tokenizing equities from Hong Kong and then expand to the UK, Europe, South Korea, and other international markets, while also opening the door to tokenizing additional asset classes over time.

In other words, xStocks is attempting to make good on one of the core promises of tokenization, making it easier to offer stocks abroad and widening the range of assets traders have access to.

"For decades, we've accepted that capital markets should be fragmented by country, currency, and market hours," Global Head of Payward Services Mark Greenberg said. "That's a legacy financial infrastructure problem. The biggest asset class that hasn't been tokenized yet is the rest of the world, and our partnership with GTN is about changing that."

Under the partnership, GTN will supply the underlying execution, custody, and record-keeping infrastructure across over 90 markets, enabling xStocks to scale globally subject to regulatory approvals. The announcement notes GTN is also working to acquire "the required licences in each market."

Once licensed, tokenized xStocks will be made available to GTN’s institutional clients.

In addition to Payward’s xStocks tokenization technology, the offering has built onchain inroads to make these assets “portable across the 100+ exchanges, wallets, and DeFi applications,” the announcement reads.

Payward acquired xStocks in December. The offering, which tokenized stocks and ETFs and holds the underlying securities to maintain 1:1 token-to-stock backing, has grown to become one of the largest tokenized equity providers. It has brought over 500 tokenized U.S. assets and claims to have over 200,000 holders.

There is approximately $1.94 billion worth of tokenized equities in existence, according to RWA.xyz. $515 million worth of that figure has been tokenized by xStocks, making it the second-largest provider after Ondo, with $887 million tokenized.

Other providers, like Superstate and Securitize, are not just issuing tokens backed by real stocks but attempting to issue actual securities onchain. Securitize, for instance, recently issued its stock onchain during its initial public offering.