SoFi and Kraken Establish Settlement Network and Launch Stablecoin
SoFi Technologies and Kraken's parent company Payward announced a strategic partnership: Payward joins SoFi's real-time settlement network SEN and connects to large corporate banking capabilities, while Kraken launches the stablecoin SoFiUSD issued by SoFi Bank; SoFi will route additional in-app crypto trading volumes to Kraken Prime, with qualified custody provided as the relationship expands.
SEN is aimed at corporate clients, allowing Kraken's institutional users to transfer USD and manage liquidity around the clock outside traditional banking hours. Both parties stated that entities on both networks can move USD at any time. SoFiUSD is designed to be pegged 1:1 to the US dollar and was made available for buying, holding, and exchanging to approximately 14.7 million members in May, initially on Ethereum and Solana, with plans for tokenized deposits, cross-border transactions, and Bullish integration. In March, SoFi extended its partnership with Mastercard, planning to use SoFiUSD to settle some card transactions. Payward co-CEO David Ripley stated that currencies and markets are converging, and infrastructure must keep pace; millions of users will buy their first crypto asset through payroll applications, which should be supported by scalable liquidity.
Kraken Prime uses smart routing to read depth across multiple venues before sending orders to the side with better execution, avoiding reliance on a single order book. SoFi members already trade crypto assets within the app, and after integration, the pricing layer expands from a single venue to a prime brokerage network. Both parties indicated that they may extend services to payments, treasury, credit, and other digital asset services in the future. SEN was launched in April alongside large corporate banking services. Deutsche Börse Group made a strategic investment of $200 million in Payward in April.
Who is buying and who is selling: The event is driven by the mismatch between banking hours and crypto trading periods, not the issuance of a new algorithmic coin. The buyer is Kraken's institutional platform that wants to adjust USD positions over the weekend, while the seller is SoFi, which exchanges retail order flow for settlement through a national bank. Beneficiaries include the distribution radius of SoFiUSD and the execution fees of Prime, while the pressure is on agents that still clear via ACH on business days. Funds flow from the bank's end-of-day balance to 24/7 settlement and stablecoin trading pairs.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
SoFi is taking the path of "issuing stablecoins through a licensed national bank and extending banking hours into the network," rather than applying for another trust license. SEN makes corporate USD settlements an externally accessible track, filled by Payward using Kraken's institutional clients. The exchange conditions are clear: you use my coin, I take your order.
The capital path is the crypto order flow in retail applications, exchanged for multi-venue liquidity from prime brokerage; institutional fiat overnight positions are exchanged for bank-level real-time settlements. Money flows from improved member trading slippage and stablecoin circulation to Prime execution and SEN clearing fees. If Mastercard's settlement experiment materializes, card organization clearing will also encounter the same bank-issued token.
Comparative entities include Circle and Paxos with trust or issuer licenses, Coinbase building its own exchange in cooperation with banks, and Standard Chartered embedding spot trading into the forex interface in the UAE. The industry position is an expansion period for licensed banks and licensed exchanges to open pipelines to each other, with control resting on who holds the deposits and who manages the order book.
The structural change is a reconstruction of the industry chain. The mechanism is that once USD can be transferred on the bank ledger 24 hours a day, exchanges no longer need to keep fiat at business day agents; stablecoins on exchanges effectively turn bank liabilities into trading collateral, allowing retail orders to flow back to bank applications, forming a closed loop rather than a one-way withdrawal.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
Once banking hours are bypassed, exchange positions can truly be continuous
Use your stablecoin, exchange for my order flow
The first crypto in payroll applications determines who owns the clearing track