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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 Acquiring HiddenRoad for $1.25B

John Kennick
April 11th, 2025
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Transaction Overview

On April 8th, 2025, Ripple, a crypto-payments infrastructure business, announced the acquisition of HiddenRoad, a multi-digital asset prime broker, for $1.25B.

 

Target: HiddenRoad

HiddenRoad, founded in 2018 and headquartered in New York, NY, is a technology-driven prime brokerage firm that offers 300+ institutional clients comprehensive services in clearing, financing, and execution across both traditional and digital asset markets. Their offerings include: 1) Prime Brokerage services in foreign exchange (FX), precious metals, digital assets, and over-the-counter (OTC) swaps across various asset classes, 2) clearing solutions for derivatives, including futures and options, as well as sponsored access and direct market access and 3) margin financing for derivatives and digital assets.

 

Relevant investors include Greycroft, which holds a board seat, Foresight Ventures, IMC Strategic Investments, Castle Island Ventures, Citadel, Coinbase Ventures, Corner Capital, Fasanara Capital, Global Founders Capital, Humla Ventures, Optiver, Profluent Trading, SLN Capital, Uncorrelated Ventures and Wintermute Ventures. 

 

Buyer: Ripple

Ripple, founded in 2012 and headquartered in San Francisco, CA, is a blockchain-based payments infrastructure company focused on enabling money transfers using its native digital asset XRP and the XRP Ledger (XRPL). It primarily works with financial institutions, providing them with tools to settle international transactions efficiently through its RippleNet network 

 

In December 2024, Ripple launched its Ripple USD stablecoin, focused on institutions.The coin would use XRP to help add liquidity. Furthermore, in 2025, the first-ever spot XRP ETF was launched in the U.S. which can further boost institutional interest.

 

Ripple was last valued at $11.3 billion following a $285M share buy-back in January 2024. Notable investors include RRE Ventures, Core Innovation Capital, IDG Capital, and Vast Ventures who are board members and 107 other investors including Pantera Capital, Lightspeed, IDG, GV, and Fidelity International Strategic Ventures

 

Transaction Parameters

Ripple announced the acquisition for $1.25B. Greycroft announced in their discussion on the investment that HiddenRoad had $100M in revenue in 2024, which makes the EV / Revenue multiple 12.5x. 

 

Notable similar transactions in the last twelve months include Arbelos Markets | FalconX (M&A Alert) NinjaTrader | Kraken for $1.5B (M&A Alert), Stillman Digital | DeFi Technologies, Flovtec | STS Digital, CTF Capital | Borderless. 

 

Strategic Rationale

This transaction allows Ripple to implement its stablecoin, RLUSD, to use across HiddenRoad’s prime brokerage services, thus greatly proliferating its presence. HiddenRoads clears up to $3 Trillion annually for over 300+ financial institutions. Furthermore, this unlocks growth opportunities for HiddenRoads as the business was previously “constrained” due to balance sheet limitations, which Ripple addresses. Finally, it establishes Ripple as the first crypto firm to own and operate a global, multi-asset prime brokerage firm.

 

Architect Partners’ Observations

We consider this a quasi-reverse bridge transaction (where a crypto native buys a traditional financial services (TradFi) firm), which we love although it’s a bit nuanced. Hidden Road has feet in both worlds, but we see the bigger strategy in the TradFi world. 

 

Traditional prime brokers are usually in large banks. They can’t offer crypto services due to regulatory uncertainty. We know when it is clear, they will, but non-bank prime brokers have a window to grow and build. Hidden Road is one of the handful larger players in this space.

 

For Hidden Road, it gives the needed capital to grow particularly in the lending space. For Ripple, there are immediate and longer term plays. 

 

Ripple launched its stablecoin, but Tether & Circle are firmly entrenched, dominant players. Any financial product lives or dies by distribution. So Ripple using this as a distribution wedge makes sense not only for its stablecoin, but also for its ledger. If Hidden Road is captive to both, then their 300+ clients will also start to use it. It may help grow crypto market share, but it also opens the TradFi world where there are no entrenched players since the entire use case is nascent. TradFi products are what gets tokenized. So laying the groundwork to become the infrastructure behind it will be a fight. This acquisition helps get Ripple in the ring.

 

For deal terms, the strategic value is what drives this deal and pricing, recognizing both firms will have benefits.

 

For the larger M&A impact, we feel this will move other parties to move a bit more aggressively. We have seen a pick up not only in deals, but in general interest during our conversations with the entire ecosystem. More and more firms who were on the sidelines are now engaged. Engagement then leads to activity which we expect to grow over the next few quarters (with the caveat if the global economy craters, it will tamper activity).

 

Sources 

PitchBook, CNBC, CoinTelegraph, Greycroft, Reuters, X