Kraken Subsidiary Launches Tokenized IPOs for Retail Investors

Payward Services, affiliated with the Kraken exchange, offers retail investors the opportunity to participate in US IPOs through a new tokenized shares program. According to an announcement on Wednesday, Kraken clients and xStocks Alliance members will be able to express interest before companies go public and acquire tokenized shares on listing day. Cointelegraph.com reports .

According to the company, these shares are issued at the IPO price and are backed 1:1 by real shares held by a regulated entity. This opens investment opportunities, typically reserved for institutional clients, to ordinary retail investors. This initiative is part of a global trend toward expanding traditional financial products via blockchain infrastructure and tokenizing real-world assets (RWA).

Under the proposed process, participating exchanges open an application window several weeks before the IPO. Payward aggregates demand from various platforms and collaborates with an underwriting syndicate to allocate shares on listing day. The resulting tokenized shares are distributed through partner exchanges, allowing investors to participate in new listings without opening traditional brokerage accounts.

Mark Greenberg, head of Payward Services, noted that buying shares at the IPO price has been a privilege limited to specific geographies and wealthy individuals for decades. Now, thanks to the xStocks infrastructure, an ordinary investor in Madrid or Malaysia can participate in a US exchange IPO. According to Bernstein Research estimates, the RWA market grew by 42% this year, reaching $51 billion.