LSE Partners Kraken Parent to List Tokenised UK Equities on 24/5 Venue

Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, has struck a deal with the London Stock Exchange to bring the 100 largest LSE-listed companies onchain as xStocks, its tokenised equity framework. Within weeks, Payward intends to issue these tokens; subject to regulatory approval, the LSE then plans to list them for trading on LSE 24, the exchange’s 24-hours-a-day, five-days-a-week venue announced in July. The two firms are also exploring whether the LSE could issue native equity tokens directly.

xStocks are structured as loan notes rather than shares. A Jersey-domiciled entity, Backed Assets (JE) Limited, holds the underlying equities as collateral and issues tracker certificates that replicate the share price on a one-to-one basis. Holders carry a claim against the issuer rather than any shareholder rights, and redemptions settle in cash or crypto rather than physical delivery of stock. The framework has accumulated more than $40 billion in cumulative volume across upwards of 200,000 holders in just over a year of operation.

What makes the arrangement broader than a UK-equities story is that xStocks already tracks securities listed on NYSE, Nasdaq, Deutsche Börse, and Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX), none of which are party to the LSE deal. Payward has prior partnerships with Dubai’s GTN for Hong Kong-listed stocks and with Deutsche Börse’s Clearstream. LSE 24 therefore becomes, in effect, an overnight trading venue for tokenised exposure to equities listed across multiple major exchanges globally, marketed to investors in more than 110 countries.

Regulatory approval remains the critical variable before any trading goes live on LSE 24. The proposal signals a meaningful shift in how established exchanges are thinking about extending equity access internationally, though the loan-note structure means issuers gain a new distribution channel without any change to their existing share register or holder rights.