Kraken’s Payment Chief Hints at What Will Redefine Crypto’s Role in Financial Services

Building the plumbing for the next generation of financial services is the goal of the cryptocurrency sector.

Innovations in money movement need infrastructure to scale, and crypto as a service (CaaS) could help it get there.

Brett McLain, head of payments and blockchain at Kraken, told PYMNTS that, with his firm’s launch of its CaaS model in partnership with equities broker Alpaca, the company is not just extending its reach. It’s reshaping the rails of modern finance.

If a major traditional bank integrates this CaaS platform into its retail services, it could mark a tipping point where digital assets become as accessible and as commonplace as stocks or bonds.

The partnership opens Kraken’s crypto infrastructure to over 200 enterprise clients already integrated with Alpaca, giving them access to crypto trading, yield generation and asset custody McLain said.

“We want to be able to offer crypto services to all of those companies that Alpaca is serving today,” he said.

Crypto’s Vision of a Modular Future for Financial Services

CaaS is a modular business model designed to integrate with existing financial ecosystems. At its core, Kraken’s CaaS offering functions as a plug-and-play crypto back end for brokers, FinTech apps and digital wallets. Clients don’t need to develop their own infrastructure or acquire crypto-specific licenses; they can lean on Kraken’s full-stack regulatory compliance and liquidity network.

“They basically get access to Kraken’s entire suite of assets,” McLain said. “We today support over 400 different assets, over 110 different blockchains.”

In a space dominated by uncertainty and regulatory roadblocks, Kraken’s positioning could provide the stability that financial institutions have been waiting for to experiment with blockchain-based financial products and services.

“Everybody’s jumping into stablecoins right now,” McLain said. “All the big banks, they’re talking about creating their own; others want to leverage existing ones. I’ve spoken with probably dozens of banks in the last month about stablecoins and their stablecoin strategy and how we can help power that.”

Kraken isn’t limiting its ambitions to the United States. With plans to expand into Canada, the European Union and the United Kingdom, the company is navigating a labyrinth of international regulations.

“With MICA coming into effect in Europe, essentially nobody’s allowed to be offering crypto services of any kind unless they have a MICA license,” McLain said. “If you’re integrating with Alpaca for equities, you’d be able to get access to crypto services… You can leverage Kraken’s licensing in order to enable those services for your clients in Europe.”

This workaround offers market entry without waiting years for complex licensing approvals. It’s a lifeline for European FinTechs and brokers that want to offer crypto but may be daunted by regulatory red tape.

Baking in the Key Guardrails Comes From Experience

Kraken’s CaaS model also layers in essential compliance tools like know your customer (KYC) and know your business (KYB) processes — key for institutions operating in regulated markets.

“Typically, they’ll be doing a KYB/KYC directly with Alpaca, and we’re kind of going to piggyback on top of that,” McLain said. “It’ll all be like a shared pool.”

This approach reduces onboarding friction for enterprise partners. It also aligns with a growing trend toward embedded FinTech services, where compliance is integrated into every layer of the stack, rather than bolted on afterward.

Another area of focus for Kraken is tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), particularly tokenized stocks like the platform’s xStocks.

“The tokenization of real-world assets [has] long been a holy grail for crypto… making those real-world assets more accessible globally to consumers,” McLain said. “We want to see that grow into other things like real estate and other tangible assets.”

The move toward tangible asset tokenization could bring liquidity to illiquid markets if the credibility and infrastructure necessary to make that dream a reality exists.

Ultimately, Kraken sees itself as more than a crypto exchange, McLain said. It’s building the plumbing for the next generation of financial services. Through alliances, regulatory fluency and technological breadth, Kraken is positioning itself as a FinTech capable of supporting an array of services — from equities and crypto to compliance and tokenized assets.