Exchange Square in Hong Kong, home to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange

Kraken Parent Is Taking xStocks Beyond U.S. Shares. One Market Comes First

By Isaac • July 22, 2026 5:33 pm • Comments

Payward, the company behind Kraken, is pushing its xStocks platform beyond the U.S.-listed shares and funds it launched with.

The first international market is Hong Kong.

xStocks says Hong Kong-listed equities are going live this week, with assets from the United Kingdom, Europe and South Korea expected in the weeks ahead. A joint release from GTN and Payward says the partnership will support additional markets and asset classes over time.

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The deal gives Payward access to GTN’s traditional-market infrastructure across more than 90 markets and eight asset classes. GTN will provide services that include execution and custody for underlying assets, along with ledgering and record-keeping for the tokenized products.

GTN also brings more than 500 institutional clients and entities operating across six regulatory jurisdictions. That reach gives Payward a repeatable route into overseas markets where separate brokerage, custody and compliance connections would otherwise have to be assembled market by market.

The companies say the partnership is already active. Distribution of xStocks to GTN’s institutional clients will come later, after the required licenses and regulatory approvals are in place.

The announcement arrives with xStocks operating at meaningful scale.

Payward says the framework now covers more than 500 tokenized stocks and exchange-traded products. It reports more than $35 billion in transaction volume and nearly 200,000 holders since xStocks launched in June 2025.

The tokens can move across more than 100 exchanges, self-custody wallets and decentralized-finance applications. In select eligible regions, the model also extends trading availability beyond the normal hours of the exchange where the underlying stock is listed.

Adding Hong Kong and the markets expected to follow would turn that framework into a cross-border catalog, with assets from several major exchanges available inside the same digital portfolio.

Payward describes xStocks as fully collateralized tokens backed 1:1 by the underlying assets. That backing sits inside a legal and operational structure that deserves as much attention as the token itself.

The tokens are issued by Backed Assets (JE) Limited, a private company based in Jersey.

Eligible Kraken customers receive access through Payward Digital Solutions Limited in Bermuda.

Eligible customers in the European Union are served through a separate Payward entity authorized by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission.

The customer holds a token, while the underlying stock remains inside the issuance and custody arrangement. The governing prospectus and final terms define the holder’s rights, so a token should not be assumed to carry every protection associated with a share held directly through a local brokerage account.

U.S. readers face a clear restriction. xStocks are unavailable in the United States and to U.S. persons, and other geographic limitations apply.

Payward’s xStocks risk disclosure says the tokens are not registered with local securities regulators. It warns that tokenized and crypto assets may be unregulated in some jurisdictions, can carry a risk of total loss and may fall outside statutory compensation programs.

Those limits show how much work sits behind the word “global.” Every new exchange, country and customer group creates another set of rules around distribution, custody, trading and investor eligibility.

Hong Kong will provide the first test of whether Payward and GTN can repeat the xStocks model outside the U.S. equity universe. A smooth rollout would give the partners a working template for the UK, Europe, South Korea and whatever comes next.

Delays would be revealing too. The partnership may be active, but each product and distribution path still has to clear its own regulatory gate before customers can use it.

Payward has already been building toward a larger role for the framework.

In March, the company announced a partnership with Nasdaq to develop a gateway connecting regulated tokenized markets with permissionless blockchain networks in eligible jurisdictions. At that point, xStocks had passed $25 billion in transaction volume, including more than $4 billion settled on-chain, with more than 85,000 unique holders.

The growth since then helps explain the international push. Payward has evidence that users will trade tokenized U.S. assets, and GTN gives it a way to test whether demand travels across borders.

Hong Kong is more revealing than one additional geographic pin. Success there would move xStocks closer to becoming a broad market-access layer that links several national exchanges through the same token framework.

The technical idea has already found users. The harder phase is building the cross-border machinery that can survive licensing reviews, hold the underlying assets and deliver the right protections in every market it enters.

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