Kraken’s parent company Payward has added 24/7 dollar settlement through a partnership with Singapore Gulf Bank – quiet plumbing that may matter more than another flashy listing.
The tie-up lets select institutions in Asia and the Gulf settle US dollar transactions instantly through SGB Net, the bank’s settlement network, per Cointelegraph’s Oct 5 report.
What 24/7 dollar settlement actually changes
Traditional dollar rails keep bankers’ hours; crypto markets do not. An institution clearing during Asian or Gulf business hours – which overlaps with nobody’s entire US clearing cycle – has historically bridged the gap with pre-funded accounts and patient treasury teams. Instant, round-the-clock settlement removes that lag and the idle capital parked against it.
For traders and institutions dealing in tokenized assets that trade around the clock, that is the difference between settling now and settling Monday.
A corridor between Asia and the Gulf
Both halves of the corridor are actively building digital asset infrastructure, and dollar liquidity is the bottleneck both keep running into. SGB Net gives Kraken’s institutional clients a regulated counterparty on one side; Payward gives the bank a crypto-native flow base on the other.
The pattern is consistent with exchanges quietly becoming payment networks: Fiserv is wiring digital assets into community banks, tokenized-stock platforms need settlement rails, and now a major exchange parent is anchoring one to a licensed bank. The winning infrastructure may be the boring kind – the plumbing nobody tweets about until it is switched off.
Source: Cointelegraph.
