The parent company of crypto exchange Kraken is opening a new door for retail investors. Payward will now allow eligible customers outside traditional brokerage channels to participate in US-listed initial public offerings at the IPO price through tokenized equity allocations.
Under the xStocks framework, customers of Kraken and select xStocks Alliance members can submit interest in upcoming IPOs before a company goes public. If approved, they receive tokenized shares at the offering price on listing day.
This targets a segment of capital markets that has historically favored institutional investors and private banking clients. Retail investors often gain access only after shares start trading, when prices may have already moved above the IPO level.
Partner exchanges open an indication of interest window weeks before a listing. Customers submit non-binding offers within the company’s indicated price range. Payward Services then aggregates demand and works with an underwriting syndicate on behalf of the Alliance.
On listing day, tokenized equities are distributed to eligible customers, backed 1:1 by the underlying share held in custody by a regulated entity.
Mark Greenberg, Global Head of Payward Services, said that going public should mean public to everyone. He noted that access to IPO pricing has long depended on geography and net worth, while xStocks aims to make similar access available to markets like Medellín, Madrid, and Malaysia.
The xStocks framework is blockchain agnostic, interoperable across chains, and composable with DeFi protocols. Payward said the system has processed over $30 billion in total transaction volume in its first year, with more than $6 billion settled onchain across over 125,000 unique holders globally.
Payward said the first tokenized IPOs powered by xStocks will be available in the coming weeks to customers of Kraken and other xStocks Alliance members.