Kraken plans to seek every licence it can in Canada, possibly including a bank charter, co-CEO Arjun Sethi told The Logic. Kraken is on track to join the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization by April 2027, when the exemption letting it work as a restricted securities dealer expires, and it’s applying to the Bank of Canada as a payment services provider. Kraken hopes to sell brokerage, tokenized stocks, and blockchain infrastructure to Canadian banks and fintechs, Sethi said, but it hasn’t committed to applying for a banking licence. Kraken also lets customers point outside AI agents at their accounts to pull data or trade, while several big Canadian banks blocked agents this week. Sethi said guardrails keep those agents within Kraken’s rules and that banks will need to prepare.
