Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the embedded wallet business of Magic Labs. The asset sale transfers Magic Labs' non-custodial wallet infrastructure—including technology that powered over 60 million wallets and processed more than $10 billion in stablecoin volume—to Payward Services, Kraken's enterprise platform. Financial terms were not disclosed, but Magic Labs had previously raised $52 million from investors including PayPal Ventures.
Post-acquisition, Magic Labs will rebrand as Newton Labs and shift its full focus to the Newton Protocol, an authorization layer for onchain finance. The protocol, which launched its mainnet beta in June 2026, enforces compliance, security, identity, and risk policies before blockchain transactions settle. The first product under this new direction is VaultKit for institutional custody. The existing wallet customer base will transition to Payward Services after the deal closes.
For Payward, the deal is the latest in a string of acquisitions aimed at building a full-stack infrastructure provider. Earlier in 2026, it acquired Bitnomial for up to $550 million, bought Reap Technologies for about $600 million, and completed purchases of Backed Finance and Magna. These moves complement Payward's earlier $1.5 billion purchase of futures broker NinjaTrader in 2025. The company, valued at $20 billion, is positioning itself ahead of a planned public listing, integrating trading, custody, derivatives, payments, and now embedded wallets into a single platform.
Newton Labs, meanwhile, will focus on chain unification and reduce fragmentation across networks. It continues collaborating with Polygon AggLayer on cross-chain infrastructure and plans to extend its authorization layer to stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets, and agentic finance applications.
