Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken and developer of the xStocks tokenised equities framework, has plans to open US-listed initial public offerings to retail investors worldwide at the IPO price. Customers of Kraken and other xStocks Alliance member exchanges will be able to submit non-binding indications of interest before a company lists, then receive tokenised equity at the offering price on the day of listing.
The mechanics work as follows: in the weeks before a listing, partner exchanges open an interest window through which customers can submit offers within the company’s indicated price range. Payward Services aggregates that demand and engages with an underwriting syndicate on behalf of the Alliance. On listing day, IPO shares are tokenised, backed one-to-one by the underlying equity and held in custody by a regulated entity, then distributed to eligible customers at the offering price through their existing exchange platform.
Payward said xStocks has processed more than 30 billion dollars in total transaction volume since launching in June 2025, with more than six billion dollars settled on-chain across over 125,000 unique holders globally. The company said the first tokenised IPOs under the new structure will be available in the coming weeks, with further market and partner expansion planned over subsequent months.
Why IPO access matters structurally
IPO allocations at the offering price have historically been rationed by geography, net worth and underwriter relationships. Institutional investors and private banking clients capture most of the first-day value; retail investors in many jurisdictions can only buy once the shares begin secondary trading, by which point pricing often already reflects a significant premium to the issue price. Payward’s model, if it scales, compresses that structural advantage.
Mark Greenberg, global head of Payward Services, said the framework was designed to break down the geography and net-worth barriers that have long defined who benefits from a public listing. “A retail investor in Medellín, Madrid, or Malaysia can have similar access to a US-listed IPO,” he said.
Regulatory and competitive landscape
The announcement sits at the intersection of digital assets and capital markets regulation, an area receiving intensifying attention from regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US, the SEC has been actively reviewing how tokenised securities fit within existing registration and broker-dealer frameworks. In Europe, the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) and the EU’s DLT Pilot Regime are creating the first coherent legislative infrastructure for tokenised securities, though the rules are still bedding in.
Payward’s xStocks tokens are described as blockchain-agnostic and interoperable across DeFi protocols. That composability is commercially attractive but also the dimension regulators will scrutinise most closely, particularly the custody chain, the underwriting syndicate relationship and how allocations are determined for retail participants across different licensing regimes.
The competitive space is developing quickly. Several firms, including traditional brokers and crypto-native platforms, are exploring tokenised equity products. The distributional edge for Payward is the existing Kraken user base and the Alliance partner network. Whether that scale translates into meaningful underwriting leverage with US banks, which control IPO allocation, remains the central commercial test. The company has not named any underwriting syndicate partners in this announcement, which is a gap the market will want to see filled before assessing the proposition at full weight.
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