Kraken's Parent Company Acquires Magic Labs' Embedded Wallet Business, Which Rebrands to Newton Labs to Focus on On-Chain Financial Protocols

July 27th, the parent company of the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, Payward, announced the acquisition of Magic Labs' embedded wallet business. The transaction was structured as an asset acquisition, and after completion, both parties will continue to operate independently. Magic Labs' wallet customers will be migrated to Payward Services, and Magic Labs will be officially rebranded as Newton Labs.

Magic Labs was founded in 2018 and has since created over 60 million wallets, providing embedded wallet services to over 200,000 developers. Following this business divestiture, Newton Labs will focus on developing the Newton Protocol, a layer-one financial authorization protocol. The protocol is scheduled to launch its mainnet beta version in June 2026, aiming to perform compliance, security, identity verification, and risk control before on-chain transactions.

Newton Labs stated that its first product based on the Newton Protocol, VaultKit, can assist in institutional-grade custody solutions to execute compliance and risk management before transaction settlement. In the future, it will expand to cover Real World Assets (RWA), stablecoins, as well as AI-driven commercial and financial scenarios.

This acquisition marks Payward's latest move in expanding its financial infrastructure footprint. Previously, in May of this year, Payward completed the acquisition of the U.S. CFTC-licensed derivatives exchange Bitnomial for up to $550 million and entered into an agreement to acquire Hong Kong-based stablecoin payment company Reap Technologies for $600 million. In 2025, Payward also acquired the retail futures trading platform NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion.