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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

Laser Digital Acquires Elysium Technology Group

Arjun Mehra & Michael Klena
June 30, 2023
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Laser Digital Acquires Elysium Technology Group for an undisclosed amount.

Transaction Overview

On June 29th, 2023 Laser Digital announced the acquisition of the post-trade solutions provider for FX & digital assets, Elysium Technology Group. 

 

Target: Elysium Technology Group

Elysium Technology Group provides post-trade solutions for the FX & digital asset industries. Elysium has three core products, including MatchHub, a centralized trading hub using connective software to settle, match, reconcile, and net trades. MatchHub also offers developer tool kits, allowing users to configure the software to their needs. Mission Control is a live, cloud-based dashboard for screening and monitoring digital assets & FX positions with connectivity to over 100 exchanges. The firm also has an enterprise database management platform, RiskDB, that focuses on smoothing post-trade workflows and reducing processing costs. As of 2019, Elysium was processing $30B of trading volume per day for FX assets. 

 

Elysium’s closest competitors include other infrastructure providers in the trade lifecycle for FX and digital assets, such as Osttra, TradeNeXus, GlobalLink, LSEG’s SwapAgent, LCX, CrossTower, BlockFills, KeyRock, Etana, and Paxos’ itBit. 

 

The company was founded in 2007 in Stamford, Connecticut by Chairman Andy Siciliano, Managing Director Ed Mount, and CTO Mark Rosenfeld, Elysium currently has over 20 employees, with offices in Connecticut, Virginia, and Illinois. Elysium was originally formed in 2002 as a private trading firm, growing up to $230M AUM, before the group pivoted into technology solutions in 2007. The firm has no disclosed capital raised to date. 

 

Buyer: Laser Digital 

Laser Digital is the digital asset-focused arm of Nomura, a large Japanese financial institution with $17B in TTM revenue and a $12B market capitalization. Laser Digital offers asset management, liquidity, and market-making solutions to their digital asset clients. In addition, the firm makes venture investments in digital asset-related companies. Laser Digital’s trading solutions (liquidity and market-making) are focused on institutional customers, such as pensions, hedge funds, and family offices.

 

Laser Digital was launched in September 2022 and is led by CEO Jez Mohideen, who previously ran Global Markets EMEA at Nomura, and Executive Chairman Steve Ashley, who was previously the Global Head of the Wholesale Division at Nomura. The firm currently has an estimated 70 employees and is based in Zurich, Switzerland. 

 

This is the first acquisition by Laser Digital, although the group has made minority investments in two digital asset-related firms. 

 

Transaction Parameters

Laser Digital acquired Elysium Technology Group for an undisclosed amount. Elysium will operate as a subsidiary and affiliate of Laser Digital under the name of Elysium LD Technology, Inc. The transaction is expected to close imminently. 

 

Comparable crypto trading infrastructure transactions include Bakkt | Apex Crypto ($200M M&A Alert) Coinbase | FairX ($275M M&A Alert), FTX | Bitvo (ND M&A Alert), Blockchain.com | Altonomy ($250M M&A Alert), Amber Group | DeCurret (ND), DHS Consulting | Allentro ($575M ), Exegy | Vela (ND), and SBI Financial Services | B2C2 (ND).

 

Strategic Rationale

This is a significant announcement that marks Laser Digital’s commitment to FX and digital assets and emphasizes the importance of owning post-trade functionality that can facilitate multiple asset classes. Laser Digital is acquiring a platform that provides “air traffic control” for its capital markets business that includes trade settlement, real-time position reporting, and a securities database with digital asset symbology.

 

As the roles market participants play in digital asset markets continue to evolve (see the separation of exchanges, brokers, and custodians), Laser Digital is positioned as a key FX and digital asset post-trade infrastructure provider with traditional financial institution roots, which is the counterparty profile that institutions want to do business with.

 

Finally, institutional-grade, cross-asset functionality will drive client decision-making, as the demand to participate in digital assets increases. 

 

Architect Partners’ Observations

The digital asset post-trade process has not been elegantly solved.  Equities have dominant clearinghouses like DTCC to make the process efficient and the risk well-managed.  Digital asset settlement looks like FX settlement where it is peer-to-peer with its associated higher risk of failure.  We are seeing more firms try to solve this, like the newly announced BitGo Go Network.  Many are offered by a custodian allowing pre-trade credit and net settlement for assets that are under custody. Elysium bridges directly to FX and futures so takes it a step further by allowing cross-asset trade settlement.  

 

All of these settlement solutions need volume and scale.  The winner will not necessarily be the best technology, but the one that can sign up participants and scale the quickest. We see firms continuing to attract M&A interest and capital into this specialized but critical segment.

 

Sources 

PitchBook, Elysium Website, Laser Digital Website, Press Release