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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

Ripple Acquires Metaco

Arjun Mehra & Michael S. Klena
May 17, 2023
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Ripple Acquires Metaco For $250M

Transaction Overview

On May 17th, 2023 Ripple announced the acquisition of the digital asset custody technology provider, Metaco for $250M. 

 

Target: Metaco

Metaco provides digital asset custody infrastructure to global banks, fintechs, regulated exchanges, and large corporations. Metaco’s suite of products, branded Harmonize, is used by large financial institutions such as Citibank, GazpromBank, BBVA, and BNP Paribas, allowing their clients to trade, settle, transfer, and custody digital assets. Metaco’s technology uses a combination of Hardware Security Modules (HSM) and Multi-Party Computation (MPC) technologies, allowing for a mix of hot, warm, and cold digital asset storage. 

 

Metaco’s closest competitors include PolySign, Fireblocks, Copper, HexTrust, Anchorage Digital, Zodia Custody, Etana, and Komainu. 

 

The company was founded in 2015 in Switzerland by Adrien Treccani, CEO, and Nicolas Dorier, CTO and now has over 100 employees.  Metaco has raised a total of $21M in capital over three rounds, with their latest round taking place in June 2020 at a $46M post-money valuation, where they raised $17M in a Series A. Investors include Giesecke+Devrient Ventures (lead), Standard Chartered Ventures, Swisscom, Avaloq, FiveT Fintech, Zürcher Kantonalbank, and SIPCA Holdings. 

 

Buyer: Ripple

Ripple specializes in blockchain-based international payments. Their cross-border payment solution, RippleNet, has processed nearly $30B worth of volume and 20M transactions since it was first launched. Clients of Ripple include large institutions and governments including SBI, Nium, Tranglo, Siam Commercial Bank, and the Monetary Authority of Bhutan. 

 

Investors in Ripple include GV, Accenture Venture, a16z, Founders Fund, and Lightspeed, with a total of over 86 investors. Ripple’s last disclosed equity valuation was $15B in January 2022’s secondary sale of equity. XRP, the native cryptocurrency of the Ripple ecosystem, has a token market capitalization of $23B, making them the 6th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization globally as of May 17, 2023.

 

Ripple is currently undergoing a lawsuit with the SEC that was filed, in 2020, against Ripple alleging that they raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering. According to CEO Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple has over $1 billion of cash on its balance sheet. 

 

Ripple was founded in 2012 by Chris Larsen, Executive Chairman, and Jed McCaleb. Brad Garlinghouse has been the CEO since 2017 and leads the firm’s ~900 employees. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

 

This is the first major acquisition by Ripple and the firm is an active strategic investor, having invested in 15+ private firms since 2021.

 

Transaction Parameters

Ripple acquired Metaco for $250M, consisting of 50% cash and 50% equity, in its first major acquisition. Metaco will become a wholly-owned, independent unit under Ripple, led by the current Metaco CEO, Adrien Treccani.

 

Comparable digital asset custodian acquisitions include Galaxy Digital | GK8 ($44M, M&A Alert), Bitpanda | Trustology (ND, M&A Alert), Celsius | GK8 ($115M, M&A Alert), Genesis | Vo1t (ND), PayPal | Curv (~$200M, M&A Alert), Voyager Digital | Ethos.io ($4M), Binance | Trust Wallet (ND), and Coinbase | Xapo ($68M).

 

Strategic Rationale

Ripple seeks to transform the $156T cross-border payment market, has initiatives focused on the emerging opportunity for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and has aspirations to allow the issuance and settlement of any type of tokenized asset as that market develops.  A common theme among each of these capabilities is ensuring the safekeeping and security of these payments and digital assets. Metaco’s custody technology and related products allow Ripple to protect client assets, control the evolution of the technology and related services as needs dictate and represents a potentially attractive new revenue stream as assets under custody scale.

 

Architect Partners’ Observations

There are several dynamics within the custody market that suggest further strategic transactions will likely occur.

 

The first is regulatory guidance, particularly in the US.  Recent regulator announcements suggest that only registered Qualified Custodians (QCs) are allowed to custody digital and crypto assets.  Few QCs exist today.   Further, regulators have guided that the function of custody needs to be separated from execution venues, which while consistent with how traditional assets like equities are handled, flies in the face of current common practice for crypto assets.

 

Second, companies like Northern Trust, BNY Mellon, State Street, JP Morgan, and Euroclear have built substantial custody businesses protecting traditional assets over the past 100 years. Many of these businesses have been inhibited, by both regulatory uncertainty and brand risk, from aggressively entering the crypto and digital asset custody markets. This will change and represents both a threat and an opportunity for those building specialized digital and crypto asset custody businesses.

 

Third, the crypto winter we’ve experienced has effectively put a pause on assets under custody (AUC) growth which has meant flat or declining revenue for many existing crypto custody specialists, requiring financial staying power and conviction that an upturn is coming.

Ripple acquires Metaco Ripple acquires Metaco