Kraken Parent Payward to Offer Retail Investors Access to US IPO Prices

Payward, the parent company of US crypto exchange Kraken, plans to give retail investors access to US initial public offerings at the offering price.

The company plans to launch the service in the coming weeks through its xStocks platform for Kraken users and customers of some partner platforms, The Block reported on June 3, citing Payward.

Under the new service, retail investors will be able to register interest in an IPO before a company lists and receive allocations of tokenized shares at the IPO price on the listing day. Access to IPO shares at the offering price has typically been limited to institutional investors and private banking clients.

Payward said the service is designed to change a structure in which retail investors could only buy shares at market prices after a listing. That meant individual investors could miss the initial gains when a stock began trading above its IPO price.

"Going public should mean being public for everyone," Mark Greenberg, Payward's global head of consumer, said. "For too long, IPO access has been a privilege tied to geography and wealth."

Retail investors in places such as Medellin, Madrid and Malaysia will now be able to participate in US-listed IPOs in a way similar to institutional investors, he added.