Kraken has decided it’s tired of being just a place to trade crypto. The veteran exchange is making a direct play for your everyday financial life. It wants your salary, your grocery bill, and your savings. And it’s betting a new app called Krak is the tool to get inside the gates of traditional banking.
- Kraken is launching the Krak app with features like a cashback debit card, direct salary deposits, and high-yield savings vaults to challenge traditional banking. The company aims for Krak to become the default money app for spending, sending, and saving across various assets.
- The Krak Card allows users to spend instantly from mixed balances, pulling funds from cash or crypto holdings like Bitcoin or Solana at the point of sale. Rewards are simple: 1% cashback paid in local currency or Bitcoin, avoiding complex token systems.
- To complete the banking loop, Krak will soon enable direct salary deposits in the UK and EU, offering users IBANs and hinting at automated yield strategies. This aggressive expansion is backed by recent multi-billion dollar funding rounds and a confidential US IPO filing.
The company is rolling out a suite of new features for its Krak app, framing it as a way for customers to “leave their bank behind and go all-in on crypto.” It’s a bold pitch, aiming squarely at the weaknesses of both old-school banks and the newer digital-only neobanks.
This isn’t just a minor update. Kraken is adding a cashback debit card, direct salary deposits, and high-yield savings vaults. The goal, according to executives, is to turn Krak into “the money app you use by default.” A single place for spending, sending, and saving that works across borders and asset types.
Mark Greenberg, Kraken’s Global Head of Consumer, didn’t mince words. “Banking still isn’t great,” he said. “What is money is changing… Folks want more… They want access to yield, they want control and transparency.”
The Krak app, launched in June, has already seen over 450,000 downloads across 130 countries. It seems plenty of people are curious about what “more” looks like.
Your Bank, But With Bitcoin
The centerpiece of this new push is the Krak Card. It’s a Mastercard, available in both physical and virtual forms, starting with users in the UK and Europe. At first glance, it looks like any other debit card. The magic is under the hood.
It lets you spend from multiple balances at once. Imagine buying a £100 item. You could set the app to pull £80 from your cash balance and the remaining £20 from your Bitcoin or Solana holdings. The conversion happens instantly at checkout, based on a spending order you preset.
This fulfills a long-held crypto promise: using digital assets for everyday purchases without a clumsy, multi-step conversion process. “To us, everything is money,” Greenberg explained. “You should be able to use whatever assets you hold to pay for everyday goods and services.”
The rewards program is also refreshingly simple. Every purchase earns 1% cashback, paid in your local currency or in Bitcoin. There are no tiers, no caps, and no confusing points systems. Bivu Das, Kraken’s UK Managing Director, contrasted this with cards that pay out in “illiquid tokens, or tightly limited cash rewards.” This is, he said, “real cashback.”
To complete the banking loop, Krak will soon introduce salary deposits for UK and EU customers. You’ll get a named account and an IBAN, allowing your employer to pay you directly into the app. Das hinted at future automations, like having your salary instantly convert to a stablecoin to earn yield or automatically buy a set amount of Bitcoin.
The ability to pay bills and transfer money domestically or internationally is also part of the package. Das believes these features combined “may crack a complete modern alternative to a traditional bank account.”
The Yield and The Risk
Beyond daily spending, Kraken is targeting your savings with a feature called “Vaults.” This is the company’s answer to the paltry interest rates offered by most banks. Vaults are designed to route your funds into independently audited DeFi lending protocols (shared pools of capital that earn interest from borrowers).
Kraken says these strategies could offer returns of up to 10+% APY. The idea is to give regular users access to on-chain yield without the steep learning curve and security risks of navigating DeFi alone. The app will offer different risk tiers, with strategies managed by professional curators like Chaos Labs and Sentora.
This all sounds great, but it brings up a critical question. Is your money safe? Das was clear that Krak is not a bank. This means it does not offer government-backed deposit insurance schemes like FSCS or FDIC. This is a major difference from a traditional bank account.
Instead, Kraken operates under electronic money institution (EMI) licenses in the UK and Europe. These regulations require the company to safeguard customer fiat funds one-to-one in segregated accounts at regulated banks. The executives argue this is a more transparent model than fractional-reserve banking, where banks lend out a portion of customer deposits.
They also pointed to the transparency of stablecoins, which are backed one-to-one by underlying assets. Still, they acknowledge the concern. “We’re aware that protection is important to customers,” Das said, hinting that more assurance features could come in the future.
This entire operation is built on Kraken’s established regulatory footprint. The firm holds a MiCA license in Ireland, giving it access to the entire European Economic Area, and has been registered with the FCA in the UK since 2013.
Ambition Backed by Billions
This aggressive move into personal finance isn’t happening in a vacuum. It’s fueled by a massive influx of capital and a soaring valuation. Just last week, Kraken announced a $200 million strategic investment from Citadel Securities.
That injection brought its total funding over the past two months to $800 million. The deals value Kraken at a hefty $20 billion. Investors include heavy hitters like Jane Street, DRW Venture Capital, and Oppenheimer Alternative Investment Management.
You don’t raise that kind of money at that kind of valuation just to be a slightly better crypto exchange. This is war chest money, intended to fund a major expansion.
The final piece of the puzzle fell into place when Kraken confirmed it had confidentially filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in the United States. The company is getting ready for Wall Street, and a story about disrupting the multi-trillion-dollar global banking industry is a powerful narrative for potential public market investors.
The Krak app is the public face of this ambition. It’s the product that could, if successful, bring millions of non-crypto-native users into Kraken’s ecosystem. The company is already planning to add credit products, more card options, and enhanced merchant rewards.
Kraken has laid all its cards on the table. It has the product, the regulatory licenses, and a mountain of cash. It’s now asking customers to make a choice. Do you trust a crypto pioneer to be your new bank?
