Kraken
FULL REVIEW 2026

Overview

Payward Europe Solutions Ltd holds the CASP authorisation from the Central Bank of Ireland, with an e-money licence in a second Irish entity. Spot fees run a twelve-tier maker/taker ladder and stablecoin pairs are priced on their own axis.

Kraken is the clearest case for reading the fee schedule rather than a comparison site. Aggregators publish 0.25% / 0.40%; Kraken’s own schedule says 0.40% / 0.80% at tier 1 — double on the taker side. The ladder is genuinely deep, so high-volume traders land far below that, but the headline number most sites quote is not the one you pay on your first trade.

Key Information

Regulation & Licensing

Payward Europe Solutions Limited holds the CASP authorisation from the Central Bank of Ireland, granted 25 June 2025, LEI 254900641D8KNHUZYX24, passporting into 30 EU/EEA states. A second Irish entity, Payward Ireland Limited, holds the e-money licence. The group additionally holds a MiFID licence for derivatives via CySEC, an FCA registration, and a Wyoming state bank charter — none of which are the EU authorisation.

Security & Custody

Trading Fees

Spot runs a twelve-tier maker/taker ladder. Tier 1 is 0.40% maker / 0.80% taker. At $10,000 30-day volume it falls to 0.22% / 0.38%, and at $10M to 0.00% / 0.10%. Stablecoin and FX pairs are priced on their own axis, from 0.20% / 0.20% down to 0.00% / 0.001%. Instant Buy in the app is a flat 1%, or 1.5% on custom orders.

This is the single biggest gap between an exchange’s own schedule and what comparison sites publish that we found anywhere in this research. Every aggregator checked showed 0.25% / 0.40% — half the real taker rate at tier 1.

Deposits, Withdrawals & Fiat Rails

Platforms & API

Pros & Cons

All 12 Exchanges Compared

The full register-verified table, with the legal entity behind every row, is on the directory index.

Visit Kraken → Compare all 12 exchanges →

Visit Kraken

This section carries no referral link. Go to Kraken directly, and before you deposit confirm that the entity you are contracting with is Payward Europe Solutions Ltd — the one named on the ESMA register — and not a differently-licensed group company.