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Payward Acquires Magic Labs Embedded Wallet Business
Payward Acquires Magic Labs Embedded Wallet Business

Transaction Overview
On July 27, 2026, Payward, the B2B crypto infrastructure parent behind the crypto exchange Kraken, announced a definitive agreement to acquire wallet-as-a-service business Magic Labs. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Target: Magic Labs (Wallet Infrastructure)
Founded in 2018 and headquartered in San Francisco, Magic Labs is a wallet-as-a-service infrastructure provider that enables businesses to create non-custodial embedded wallets for their end users. The company was co-founded by Sean Li, Arthur Jen, and Jaemin Jin.

Magic’s core offering is a developer-facing SDK and API that provides embedded wallets with passwordless authentication via email, social login, passkeys, or SSO. The product suite includes 1) API Wallets for server-side management with security and customizable key sharding, and 2) Embedded Wallets for client-side non-custodial key management. As of July 2026, the platform supports more than 30 blockchain networks and provides a white-label UI, fiat onramps, and transaction signing.

As of July 2026, Magic Labs had provisioned more than 60 million wallets and served more than 200,000 developers across more than 18,000 applications. Clients include Polymarket, Naver, Helium, Forbes, WalletConnect, Mattel, and Immutable. During the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Polymarket processed over $3 billion in prediction market transactions with zero downtime, powered by Magic’s embedded wallets. Magic said it had supported over $8.9 billion in cumulative transaction volume for Polymarket as of November 2025.

Magic Labs has raised a total of $83 million in disclosed venture funding across 4 rounds, with significant investors including PayPal Ventures, Northzone, Tiger Global, Digital Currency Group, CoinFund, and Placeholder VC.

In November 2024, Magic Labs announced Newton, a chain unification network built in collaboration with Polygon Labs, expanding beyond wallet infrastructure into cross-chain protocol development. In November 2025, Magic Labs integrated the Newton Protocol SDK across its developer network. The company described Newton Protocol as “the authorization layer for on-chain finance.” These moves preceded the company’s decision to divest its wallet business and refocus entirely on protocol development.

Buyer: Payward
Founded in 2011 and headquartered in San Francisco, Payward is a private B2B crypto infrastructure holding company. Payward operates Kraken, one of the longest-running cryptocurrency exchanges, alongside NinjaTrader, xStocks, Bitnomial, and CF Benchmarks. The company is led by co-CEOs Arjun Sethi and Dave Ripley.

Most relevant to this transaction, Payward operates Payward Services, a B2B infrastructure platform that provides institutions with access to Payward’s trading, custody, settlement, and payments infrastructure via API. The acquisition of Magic Labs adds embedded wallet infrastructure to their offering. In April 2026, Payward launched a white-label fiat-to-crypto onramp through a partnership with Onramper, making embedded wallet infrastructure a natural adjacent capability.

Payward has been expanding beyond its core exchange through acquisition. In 2025, the company acquired NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion (retail futures, M&A Alert) and agreed to acquire Backed Finance (tokenized equities, Press). In 2026, it acquired Magna (token lifecycle management, Press), completed the acquisition of Bitnomial for up to $550 million (regulated derivatives, M&A Alert), and agreed to acquire Reap for $600 million (card issuance and payments, M&A Alert). Including this transaction, Payward has announced or completed 8 acquisitions since early 2025, committing several billion dollars to platform expansion ahead of its planned public listing.

For the full year of 2025, Payward reported adjusted revenue of $2.2 billion, a 33% increase year over year from $1.5 billion in 2024. Trading-based revenue accounted for 47% of the total, with the remaining 53% from asset-based services, including payments, custody, yield, and financing.

In November 2025, Payward raised $800 million at a $20 billion post-money valuation in a round backed by Citadel Securities, Jane Street, and Apollo Global Management, and confidentially filed an S-1 with the SEC ahead of a planned IPO. In April 2026, Deutsche Börse Group made an additional $200 million strategic investment in the company.

Transaction Parameters
Payward has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the wallet-as-a-service business of Magic Labs for an undisclosed amount. The transaction includes Magic Labs’ embedded wallet business, including wallet clients and associated infrastructure.

The transaction is part of a broader corporate restructuring in which Magic Labs is rebranding as Newton Labs to focus on the Newton Protocol. The two companies will remain independent following the close.

Architect Partners served as the exclusive financial advisor to Magic Labs.

Strategic Rationale
Payward is acquiring Magic’s embedded wallet business to augment Payward Services’ B2B offering. Payward Services gives partners a single integration point for trading, custody, tokenized assets, on/off-ramps, and derivatives. The wallet, the account layer where end users actually hold assets and interact with onchain products, was a critical piece partners still had to source from a third party. Magic brings that layer in-house with proven infrastructure: a TEE-based signing solution, an embedded integration layer, and a developer SDK that together have provisioned more than 60 million wallets and supported over $10 billion in stablecoin volume for 200,000+ developers.

On Day 1, Payward can offer fintechs, enterprises, and financial institutions a complete embedded onchain offering under a single provider, spanning wallet provisioning, onboarding, funding, trading, custody, and settlement, without stitching together multiple vendors. Every embedded wallet also becomes a distribution point that routes transaction volume into the rest of Payward’s infrastructure, deepening the non-trading, less volatile revenue that already accounts for 53% of Payward’s total as it heads toward a public listing.

Architect Partners’ Observations
This transaction marks the near-completion of a consolidation wave in embedded wallet infrastructure. In roughly one year, Fireblocks acquired Dynamics ($90M), Consensys acquired Web3Auth ($50M), Stripe acquired Privvy, Ripple acquired Palisade, and Paxos acquired Fordefi. Now each group has its own independent wallet infrastructure provider, and Payward has acquired the category’s pioneer. The market has reached a clear verdict: embedded wallets are foundational infrastructure for every onchain product, and they are a layer of a full-stack platform rather than a standalone business.

The logic is simple: the wallet is becoming the account primitive of onchain finance. Whoever provisions the wallet sits at the front of the customer relationship and routes the volume that follows. For platforms whose trading revenue is inherently cyclical, owning the onboarding layer converts market position into durable, recurring B2B infrastructure revenue.

Sources
Press Release, Payward Services, PitchBook

Alerts

Stablecoin payment infrastructure startup AlloyX Merges With Solowin For $350M

Eric Risley
September 7th, 2025
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Transaction Overview

On September 3rd, 2025,AlloyX announced it had reached a definitive merger agreement with Nasdaq-listed Solowin Holdings, at a valuation of $350M. 

 

Target: AlloyX

AlloyX is a Hong Kong–based stablecoin payments and tokenization infrastructure platform that merges traditional banking with blockchain to support compliant, 24/7 cross-border money movement for businesses.

 

Key offerings include embedded wallet services; fiat-to-stablecoin on/off-ramps; merchant stablecoin acceptance with end-to-end settlement and FX; and tools for issuance and custody of real-world-asset (RWA) tokens, including a tokenized US dollar money-market fund. These services are built to integrate across multiple blockchains and payment channels for fintechs, exchanges, payment providers, and enterprises.

 

AlloyX reports platform coverage for businesses in 70+ countries and is expanding its ecosystem through programs and partnerships such as the Circle Alliance Program and security partners like Safeheron.

 

AlloyX operates via licensed affiliates—U.S. MSB; Hong Kong MSO, Money Lender, and TCSP; Australia DCE and AFSL—backed by SOC 2–attested controls. Client assets are segregated with policy-based approvals and full audit trails, and fiat/stablecoin flows pass through regulated banks, trusts, and qualified custodians with KYB/KYC, sanctions screening, and (where applicable) travel-rule messaging, providing compliant 24/7 payment and tokenization rails from onboarding through settlement.

 

AlloyX is a privately held company, so detailed financial metrics have not been made public. In January 2025, AlloyX raised $10M in seed round financing in a round led by Solowin Holdings with participation from Arbitrum Foundation, Offchain Labs, PMT Capital, Ming Capital, Fern Win Capital, Whitecove Capital and Kiln. 

 

AlloyX’s main competitors include other payment infrastructure platforms such as Circle, Ripple, Rail, BVNK, Conduit, Zero Hash, Transak, Stripe, Coinbase Commerce and Bitso Business, plus tokenized-cash/RWA alternatives like Lynq, Ondo, OpenEden, Matrixdock and Libeara/Standard Chartered.

 

Buyer: Solowin

Solowin Holdings is a Hong Kong–based, Nasdaq-listed financial services group that blends traditional brokerage and corporate finance with regulated digital-asset access. The business operates primarily through Solomon JFZ, its SFC-licensed platform, using that regulatory core to provide seamless access to Hong Kong, U.S., and Mainland China markets while building bridges into Web3.

 

Solomon JFZ holds SFC Type 1, 4, 6, and 9 licenses and is a participant of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong with direct HKSCC clearing and China Connect participation. These capabilities support equities trading, IPO subscriptions, and mandate management, and also enable participation in Hong Kong’s spot crypto ETFs as a participating dealer; in partnership with OSL, Solowin has facilitated in-kind subscriptions and redemptions that connect ETF flows to the underlying BTC and ETH.

 

On the tokenization side, Solowin has launched a tokenized US dollar money-market strategy (Real Yield Token), live on Arbitrum and Polygon with Chainlink Proof of Reserve and NAVLink for ongoing, on-chain verification. This brings production-grade transparency to an RWA fund within a compliance-first perimeter.

 

As a public company, Solowin pairs this infrastructure with listed-company visibility and access to capital. In 2025 it co-led AlloyX’s US$10M round and then completed a US$350M acquisition of AlloyX, integrating stablecoin payment rails and tokenization middleware into its regulated stack. The platform can scale from traditional securities to stablecoin-native payments without changing the governance backbone clients already rely on.

 

Transaction Parameters

The deal is structured entirely in stock, with AlloyX’s founding team and strategic investors locked into a 12-month commitment to remain aligned with Solowin’s long-term goals. It is understood that AlloyX is an “early-stage company with limited history” that has “yet to generate revenue.”

 

If the business is able to achieve a $600M valuation within 24 months of closing, the AlloyX team will receive a $5M payout with an additional $5M payout at a $1B valuation. 

 

Previous comparable transactions include: Banxa | OSL (M&A Alert), Rail | Ripple for $200M (M&A Alert), Iron.xyz | MoonPay for $100M (M&A Alert), Helio | MoonPay for $175M (M&A Alert), and Bridge.xyz | Stripe for $1,100M (M&A Alert). 

 

Strategic Rationale

Before acquiring AlloyX, Solowin built the foundation. It secured SFC Types 1, 4, 6, and 9 licenses and became an HKEX participant, listed on Nasdaq on September 7, 2023, acted as a participating dealer for Hong Kong’s first spot BTC and ETH ETFs, launched Real Yield Token with Chainlink Proof of Reserve and NAVLink on Arbitrum and Polygon, and pursued a U.S. bank license. These steps created a regulated base, partner trust, faster settlement workflows, and transparent on-chain reporting, all necessary for payment rails.

 

The missing piece was a ready-to-use stablecoin payments stack, which AlloyX supplied with enterprise wallets and accounts, a unified API, corridor orchestration, compliant pay-ins and pay-outs with FX, and treasury automation.

 

With the closing of this acquisition, Solowin’s vision for a new financial ecosystem centered on stablecoins is now taking shape. AlloyX’s core capabilities, including its enterprise-grade compliant stablecoin application platform, Real-World Asset (RWA) tokenization technology, and 7×24 global payment network, will be deeply integrated with Solowin’s network of financial service and compliance licenses to build a unified stablecoin financial ecosystem.

 

Architect Partners’ Observations

Crypto payments are in the earliest stages of scaling, as shown in our three recent reports titled “Crypto Payments & Infrastructure: The Strategic Opportunity.” The past nine months have shown that M&A will play an important role in assembling the pieces required for companies to reshape payments. This is the sixth material transaction in this area.

 

Sources 

PitchBook, AlloyX Press Release, Coindesk, Solowin Press Release