Reap

Founded in 2018 in Hong Kong, Reap initially focused on corporate card issuance and payment processing, gradually building a stablecoin-native infrastructure. In 2021, it completed a $4.5 million seed round led by Global Founders Capital, marking early validation of its cross-border payment model.

A significant milestone came in 2025 when Reap launched its stablecoin-based card issuing and payment platform, enabling businesses to settle in USDC/USDT while recipients receive fiat. This positioned Reap as a key player in the Web3 payment layer, processing billions in transaction volume.

The most transformative event occurred in May 2026, when Kraken's parent company Payward acquired Reap for up to $600 million. This acquisition integrated Reap's stablecoin payment infrastructure into Kraken's broader ecosystem, expanding its regulatory footprint across APAC, Europe, and the Americas. It validated the strategic importance of stablecoin rails in mainstream finance and solidified Reap's role as a foundational infrastructure provider for the emerging on-chain economy.

In 2026 Reap moved from Hong Kong card issuer to payment infrastructure inside the Kraken group. Payward announced its acquisition of Reap on 8 May for up to USD 600 million, and the deal closed on 1 July, placing Reap inside Payward's B2B business alongside the exchange's liquidity and settlement layers.

Reap's products came quickly: on 9 September it launched a Virtual Asset Ledger letting card-issuing clients settle spend from users' bitcoin and other virtual asset balances at the point of sale at the platform's live rate, without Reap custoding assets or acting as an exchange; on 23 September it partnered with Visa to extend stablecoin-linked credit card programmes to more than 100 markets, from Asia and Latin America into Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with 24/7 settlement. Reap reports card and payment volume up 33 per cent year on year in the first half of 2026 after tripling revenue and volume in 2025.

Future strategy and roadmap: After the Payward acquisition, Reap plans to extend its Visa-linked stablecoin card to over 100 markets worldwide, reaching Europe, the Middle East and Africa from Asia and Latin America. Its agentic payments product built on Visa Intelligent Commerce issues tokenized, programmable-limit, passkey-authenticated agent credentials, is piloting with design partners and targets a year-end launch, alongside a multicurrency stablecoin card and Latin American hubs such as Mexico.

Daren Guo — Co-founder & CEO; founded Reap in Hong Kong in 2018, previously employee #90 at Stripe where he helped build out APAC.

Kevin Kang — Co-founder; Canadian investment banking background, oversees strategy and operations.

Payward, Kraken's parent, completed its acquisition of Reap in July 2026; Reap continues as a standalone brand.

According to public sources, Ezequiel Mariano Gorbatik joined Reap in July 2026 as an Engineering Manager, with his LinkedIn and RootData profiles updated accordingly. No core team departures were recorded during the same period.

Reap is a stablecoin-powered corporate payments and card infrastructure company. In July 2026, it officially became part of Payward, Kraken's parent company. Following the acquisition, the team has continued to expand; this engineering management hire may support its global card issuing and cross-border payment growth.

Reap charges 2% on ATM withdrawals and 2% on foreign exchange conversion for its Reap Card.

Reap's Global Payouts service charges 0.5% on bank transfers with volume-based variation, a USD 25 cross-border payment fee per transaction, and USD 0-5 per local payment rail.

In 2025, Reap obtained a Singapore Major Payment Institution licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore; in March 2026 it added Mexico's anti-money-laundering registrations for virtual asset services and card issuing, and it holds a Hong Kong money service operator licence.