Payward connects to Gulf bank’s 24-hour dollar settlement network

Payward, the company behind Kraken, has connected to Singapore Gulf Bank's SGB Net clearing network so selected institutional clients can fund digital-asset activity at any hour. The rollout begins with U.S. dollar transactions in eligible Asian and Gulf jurisdictions.

The bank's October 5 statement describes an integration that addresses a recurring operational problem: cryptocurrency markets keep trading through weekends and overnight, while cash transfers can remain constrained by bank cutoffs and settlement delays. SGB clients can deposit funds with Payward and use them immediately through the new connection.

CoinPost reported the arrangement on October 6 in Japan, following Payward's October 4 announcement. The integration is available to a limited initial group. Additional customers and currencies are planned; the firms have not presented it as a universal service for Kraken users.

SGB Net is the bank's real-time, multicurrency clearing network. Its ability to support several currencies does not mean every currency is included in the Payward rollout. The initial U.S. dollar scope is specified in both the official statement and independent reporting.

A second part of the partnership concerns access to trading liquidity. Singapore Gulf Bank is partnering with Kraken Prime, Payward's institutional brokerage service, and says it will use Payward's markets to price trades for its own customers over the coming months. That timetable separates the liquidity expansion from the cash-settlement connection already announced.

Singapore Gulf Bank is licensed and regulated by the Central Bank of Bahrain. It launched SGB Net in 2025 and says the network now handles more than $20 billion in fiat transactions each month. That figure describes the bank's wider clearing network, rather than volume generated by this new partnership.

CoinDesk's October 5 report notes that the companies did not disclose the number of customers in the initial rollout or transaction volumes attributable to the integration. Those omissions leave its early scale unquantified.

The practical change is access to cash when digital markets are open. Payward places the bank connection within Payward Banking, its infrastructure for moving money across deposits, payments and other services. Broader currency coverage and the bank's planned use of Kraken Prime remain subsequent steps.