Kraken exchange: what it is, who runs it and how it works

Who operates Kraken

Kraken is a brand, not a single legal entity. The parent company is Payward, Inc., which OFAC describes as a Delaware-incorporated virtual currency exchange. Payward's own newsroom presents it as the infrastructure company behind Kraken and several other products, including the futures platform NinjaTrader, the tokenized-equity product xStocks and the index provider CF Benchmarks.

Which company you actually contract with depends on where you live. Kraken's legal disclosures page names a separate entity for each region, and each one holds a different set of registrations. The table lists the main ones as Kraken states them.

The French regulator's register of MiCA firms, kept by the AMF, lists Payward Europe Solutions Limited as a licensed crypto-asset service provider passported from Ireland, covering custody, exchange, order execution and transfer services among others. The UK disclosures carry a warning that matters for UK users: the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme do not cover cryptoasset services. A registration means the firm is supervised for specific activities, not that customer crypto is insured or guaranteed.

What Kraken offers

Kraken's retail business runs through two front ends that share one account.

• Kraken app: instant and recurring buys, sells and conversions at a quoted price that includes a spread. It is aimed at people who want to buy an asset rather than place orders on a book.
• Kraken Pro: an order-book trading interface with maker and taker fees, limit and other order types, and access to margin and futures where your account and location allow them.

Around those two sit products whose availability varies by country: staking and Auto Earn, margin and perpetual futures, options, xStocks (tokenized shares), stock trading for US customers only, a crypto card, and an API for automated trading. For institutions Kraken lists Prime, an over-the-counter (OTC) desk and custody services.

Kraken Wallet is a separate, self-custodial app. Kraken describes it with the line "Your keys. Your crypto." and lists support for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Base, Arbitrum, Polygon, Ink and other networks. Coins in Kraken Wallet are not held by the exchange, which is the opposite of how a Kraken exchange account works.

How Kraken works, step by step

1. Open an account and verify. Kraken assigns each account a verification level. Funding, withdrawal and product limits depend on that level and on the account type, so identity checks come before most activity.
2. Fund it. Deposit fiat through a supported local method, or send crypto from another wallet. US residents can deposit only in USD, according to Kraken's geographic-restrictions article.
3. Trade. Buy at a quoted price in the Kraken app, or place orders on Kraken Pro, where your order either adds liquidity to the book (maker) or takes it (taker). The fee differs for each, as the next section shows.
4. Hold or move the asset. Crypto left on the exchange sits in a custodial balance that Kraken controls. Withdrawing to an external address, including Kraken Wallet, moves it into your own custody.

Kraken fees

Kraken's fee schedule separates the app from Kraken Pro, and the two are priced very differently.

Kraken app. Instant and recurring buys, sells and conversions carry a 1% trading fee; individually customized orders carry 1.5%. A spread is built into the displayed price on top of that and varies with volatility, asset and order size. Card and other payment-method fees may also apply. Kraken+, a subscription, removes the app trading fee on up to $10,000 of monthly volume but not the spread or card processing fees.

Kraken Pro spot. Fees are tiered by 30-day trading volume in USD. A selection of the published tiers:

As a worked example at the entry tier, a $1,000 market order that executes immediately pays the 0.80% taker fee, or $8; the same order resting as a limit order that someone else fills pays the 0.40% maker fee, or $4. Discounts come from volume alone; the schedule does not tie lower fees to holding an exchange token. Pairs where both sides are stablecoins, pegged tokens or fiat (for example USDT/USD or EUR/USD) use a cheaper schedule that starts at 0.20% for both makers and takers.

Funding. Deposit and withdrawal fees vary by method and currency and can be fixed, dynamic or percentage-based. Kraken says the fee shown at confirmation is the one that applies and that it may change these fees without notice. Balances below the minimum order size can be converted for a fixed 3% fee. For how maker, taker, spread and network costs combine, see our explainer on crypto trading fees.

Countries, KYC and access restrictions

Kraken's geographic restrictions article (updated 30 September 2026) lists regions it does not serve at all: Afghanistan, Belarus, Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Libya, North Korea, Russia, Sudan, South Sudan and Syria.

Inside the United States the restrictions are state by state:

• Residents of New York and Maine are not served.
• Crypto transfers are unavailable in Indiana; fiat transfers are unavailable in Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts and Utah.
• Residents of Texas and New Hampshire cannot deposit or hold EUR or trade EUR pairs.
• Kraken Financial services and staking rewards are available only in selected states.

Product access narrows further by country. The fee schedule notes that equities are US-only and that xStocks, margin and perpetual futures depend on account and location, and the Kraken app itself is offered only in listed countries. Checking the product page for your own country before funding an account avoids finding out after a deposit.

Security, custody and proof of reserves

A Kraken exchange account is custodial: Kraken holds the private keys and you hold a claim on the balance. On its security page Kraken says it uses cold storage and hot wallets in guarded, video-monitored facilities, but it does not publish what share of assets sits in cold storage. It states ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification and a SOC 2 Type 1 examination, and runs a bug bounty program.

Account-level controls include FIDO2 two-factor authentication with passkeys, a Global Settings Lock that freezes account changes, email confirmation for new withdrawal addresses, adjustable session timeouts and API keys with scoped permissions. Kraken also states that it does not support account recovery by phone or SMS, which is useful when judging whether a "support" contact is genuine; our guide to avoiding crypto phishing covers the common patterns.

Kraken publishes a proof of reserves. The most recent snapshot on the page is dated 30 June 2026 and reports reserve ratios of 102.9% for BTC, 100.5% for ETH, 100.6% for SOL and 102.3% for XRP, with USDC and USDT above 105%. The method aggregates anonymized client balances into a Merkle tree so each customer can check that their balance was included. Kraken's own page lists the limits: the check shows control of funds at a single moment, cannot prove exclusive possession of keys, and cannot rule out hidden encumbrances or borrowed funds. The auditor is not named on the page.

Ownership and regulatory track record

A post on Kraken's blog dates the founding of the company behind Kraken to 28 July 2011 and credits Jesse Powell, who had worked on recovery after a hack at the early exchange Mt. Gox. Kraken's about page cites more than 13 million people worldwide using it; that figure is the company's own and is not independently audited.

Payward is privately held. Its newsroom shows continued expansion through 2026, including announcements to acquire Magic Labs' wallet infrastructure business (July) and Saldo Bank (October), an investment from Nasdaq (September), full market approval from Dubai's VARA (October) and in-principle approval from Kazakhstan's AFSA (October). Earlier, in March 2025, Kraken agreed to buy NinjaTrader, a US retail futures platform registered with the CFTC, for $1.5 billion; Payward now lists NinjaTrader among its products. In the EU, the AMF register shows Payward Europe Solutions providing passported MiCA services in France from 25 June 2025.

The main US enforcement matters on record are:

• November 2022, OFAC: Payward agreed to pay $362,158.70 to settle apparent violations of Iran sanctions and to invest a further $100,000 in sanctions controls. OFAC linked the violations to a failure to adopt geolocation tools, including automated IP-address blocking, promptly enough.
• February 2023, SEC (staking): Payward Ventures, Inc. and Payward Trading Ltd. agreed to pay $30 million and to stop offering its staking-as-a-service program as an unregistered securities offering, without admitting or denying the allegations.
• November 2023 to March 2025, SEC (exchange case): the SEC sued Payward, Inc. and Payward Ventures, Inc. in November 2023. On 27 March 2025 the parties filed a joint stipulation to dismiss the case with prejudice; the SEC said the dismissal was not based on the merits of its claims.

Alternatives by function

Which alternative makes sense depends on what you want Kraken for. These are categories, not recommendations, and none is ranked here.

• Another centralized exchange: other custodial venues with order books and fiat on-ramps. Our exchange ratings compare entry trading costs across the exchanges we cover, Kraken included.
• Staking without an exchange account: dedicated staking providers or native staking from your own wallet. See the staking platforms ratings.
• Holding rather than trading: a self-custody wallet, such as Kraken Wallet or a hardware device, removes exchange custody risk but makes you responsible for the recovery phrase. Our hardware wallet ratings cover the offline option.

Kraken's trading costs are scored separately in our Kraken review, which applies the published rating criteria; this profile describes the company and does not grade it.