Key takeaways

• Payward’s third-quarter adjusted EBITDA fell 66% from a year earlier to $60 million, though it rose from $23 million in the second quarter.
• Total platform margin, its new main revenue measure, fell 12% year over year to $487 million on $353 billion in transactions.
• The company plans U.S. prediction markets, stock perpetual futures and a personal finance AI agent.

Kraken parent Payward reported $60 million in third-quarter adjusted EBITDA on Friday, down 66% from $178.6 million a year earlier but up from $23 million in the second quarter, according to The Block. Slower crypto trading weighed on fees.

The private company has replaced adjusted revenue with a measure it calls total platform margin, which also deducts staking rewards paid to customers. That figure fell 12% from a year earlier to $487 million, but rose 12% from $436 million in the second quarter.

Customers transacted $353 billion across Payward’s platforms in the quarter, down 30% year over year and up 22% from the prior quarter. Funded accounts reached 7.1 million at the end of September, up 37% from a year earlier, while billable accounts rose 74% to 1.5 million.

Payward nearly doubled its share of global crypto spot trading to 6.5% in September from 3.3% a year earlier, Cointelegraph reported. The number of derivatives contracts it charges a per-contract fee on rose 84% to 66 million, and margin from subscriptions and trader evaluations rose 59% to $125 million.

Less Reliance on Trading Fees

Income tied to client assets and access to products, data and services rose to 52% of the total, up from 46% a year earlier, CoinDesk reported. Margin from assets customers hold on its platforms, including staking services, rose 26% to $128 million, Cointelegraph said.

Payward said prediction markets for U.S. clients are among its next products, though it gave no launch date. It also plans stock perpetual futures through its own CFTC-regulated exchange, a test U.S. credit card, and a personal finance AI agent that would need customer approval before each trade, The Block said.

Its tokenized stock platform, xStocks, passed $1 billion in assets in October, and the company plans funds built around it. Payward has also expanded through acquisitions, including futures broker NinjaTrader, derivatives platform Bitnomial and stablecoin payments firm Reap, according to Cointelegraph.

Payward has also held talks with Wells Fargo about supplying liquidity for crypto trading, and separately discussed a financial-infrastructure partnership with BNY, CoinDesk previously reported, citing people familiar with the discussions. In November, a Payward-affiliated fund and its clients bought an undisclosed amount of AAVE tokens.

Other exchanges are under similar pressure. Coinbase’s third-quarter revenue fell 35% year over year, CoinDesk noted, while Gemini reported a 19% revenue drop and a 73% fall in trading volume this week.

The results could matter for a future listing. Payward confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO in November 2025 but paused the plan in March. By September, the earliest listing window it was considering was the second quarter of 2027, Cointelegraph reported.