Payward, the parent company of Kraken, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the wallet-as-a-service business of Magic Labs, adding embedded non-custodial wallet infrastructure to its enterprise platform and expanding the range of services it offers institutional and business clients.
The acquisition will bring Magic Labs’ wallet technology into Payward Services, the company’s infrastructure platform for businesses. The platform already provides crypto trading, custody, tokenised assets, fiat on and off-ramps, and derivatives. Once integrated, enterprise customers will be able to access embedded wallet capabilities alongside those services through a single provider.
Magic Labs says its infrastructure has powered more than 60 million wallets and processed over $10 billion in stablecoin volume across more than 200,000 developers. The technology enables businesses to integrate self-custodial wallets into their products without building wallet infrastructure from scratch.
Payward Expands Its Infrastructure Stack
Magic Labs developed its wallet platform using trusted execution environment (TEE)-based signing, embedded wallet integrations, and developer SDKs that allow businesses to deploy and manage non-custodial wallets at scale. Following the completion of the transaction, Payward plans to integrate those capabilities into Payward Services, extending its enterprise infrastructure offering.
Mark Greenberg, Chief Commercial Officer of Payward, said embedded wallets are becoming an increasingly important component of on-chain applications.
“Embedded wallets are becoming foundational infrastructure for every onchain product. Magic Labs’ technology lets us bring that layer in-house and offer partners a complete, integrated stack—exchange, custody, and now wallets—without stitching together multiple providers.”
The acquisition continues Payward’s strategy of broadening its enterprise infrastructure platform by bringing complementary services under one ecosystem, a pattern reflected in wider exchange consolidation and one that lets businesses access trading, custody, settlement, and wallet infrastructure through a unified integration.
Magic Labs Shifts Focus to Newton Protocol
Following the sale, Magic Labs will continue operating as Newton Labs and focus on developing Newton Protocol, its authorisation layer for on-chain finance. The protocol is designed to help applications enforce identity, compliance, security, and risk policies before transactions are executed. Demand for that kind of pre-settlement control has grown alongside a run of regulatory disputes and investor lawsuits that continue to expose where platforms fail to police their own systems.
Sean Li, CEO of Newton Labs, said the divestiture allows the company to concentrate on its next phase of development.
“This transition allows us to put our full energy behind Newton, the authorization layer for onchain finance, while the wallet business moves to a team committed to serving our customers.”
The Magic Labs deal extends an acquisition run that Payward has used to reposition itself from a spot exchange into a full-stack financial infrastructure provider. The company completed its $600 million purchase of stablecoin payments firm Reap in July, following its $550 million acquisition of derivatives platform Bitnomial and the $1.5 billion purchase of futures broker NinjaTrader in 2025.
These deals have accompanied a fundraising effort at a $20 billion valuation as the company builds toward a planned public listing, with each deal filling a specific capability gap across payments, derivatives, and now embedded wallets. Payward expects the acquisition to close in the coming weeks, subject to customary closing conditions.
