Kraken targets PayPal and Venmo, as crypto giant enters payments game

Kraken is coming for the payments industry. The crypto exchange is building a brand-new financial app called Krak, which will let people and businesses send money, including crypto and regular currencies, across borders without paying high fees.

This new tool is Kraken’s way of breaking into the global remittance and payments market, putting itself in direct competition with names like PayPal, Venmo, and Revolut.

Krak is designed to work with crypto and fiat, and it’ll support over 300 assets right from the jump. But it’s not totally open, users will only be able to send money to other Krak users or transfer funds to their own bank accounts.

That setup makes it more controlled than traditional platforms, but also potentially safer for users still hesitant about crypto transfers.

Krak adds debit cards and rewards ahead of Kraken IPO

Kraken’s Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said Krak will soon include physical and virtual debit cards, giving users a way to spend money directly from the app. Sethi explained in an interview that credit cards and loans are also in development.

“One of the reasons why I invested in Kraken and came here was around how to be able to make much more evenly distributed products,” Sethi said. Along with being Kraken’s co-CEO, he also chairs Tribe Capital Partners LLC, a venture capital firm with heavy ties to the crypto industry.

Krak will also offer rewards on certain crypto balances. The company said users can earn up to 10%, depending on the asset. For example, those holding USDG—a stablecoin from the Global Dollar Network, which Kraken is part of—can earn up to 4.1% on their holdings.

Sethi made it clear that Kraken is not trying to profit off user transactions. “I want to make this free to every customer worldwide for this very specific value proposition,” he said. Krak won’t be charging fees or lending against customer funds. Instead, Kraken wants to bring in new users who may not currently trade crypto but want access to its benefits.

Sethi also compared the approach to YouTube’s early days. “These products already exist for my customers for free, and I monetize them differently,” he said, pointing to exchange liquidity and other services as the real revenue sources.

Kraken follows Coinbase and JPMorgan in crypto payments push

Kraken’s move comes at a time when other major players are also targeting the crypto-payments space. Coinbase launched a new e-commerce payments system three days ago, built to handle USDC transactions and designed to slot into current platforms without breaking anything. A spokesperson said, “We built the new system to mimic credit-card rails so it slots into existing flows with zero disruption.”

Coinbase is working directly with Shopify and Stripe Inc., letting sellers on Shopify accept USDC over Base, Coinbase’s own layer 2 blockchain built on Ethereum. This system promises lower costs, faster transactions, and instant access to a global customer base.

At the same time, Circle, the issuer of USDC, rolled out a separate network to handle cross-border payments back in April. The market is heating up fast, with each company trying to dominate different parts of the space.

Even JPMorgan just revealed a pilot for tokenized US dollar deposits, called JPMD, that will also run on the Base chain. This puts traditional finance giants directly on the same blockchain as crypto-native apps, marking a huge change in how money can move.

Kraken is clearly trying to build something that stretches beyond crypto trading. The company has been expanding fast, launching zero-fee stock trading in the US earlier this year and buying futures platform NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion.

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