Kraken in Ireland: who you deal with, what it costs

Kraken is regulated in Ireland in the strongest sense available: the company that provides its crypto services to Irish customers, Payward Europe Solutions Ltd, is authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland as a crypto-asset service provider under MiCA. Kraken's EEA terms (effective 29 June 2026) give the register number as C468360. The euro wallet side is run by a second Irish company, Payward Ireland Ltd, an authorised e-money institution. That combination is rare among the big names, and it is the main reason Kraken gets its own page here.

It is not a recommendation to open an account. It is a description of who you would be dealing with, what the euro routes cost and where the gaps in our checking are. Everything was read on 5 October 2026.

The legal entities, plainly

When you sign up from Ireland you are signing a contract with more than one company, which is normal for a crypto and e-money service. Kraken's EEA terms set out the chain. Two entities matter most to you:

The same terms also name other group companies, including a Cypriot investment firm for margin and derivatives products and non-EU entities in the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands and the US. For ordinary spot buying and selling you will mainly meet the Irish companies. If you move into margin or derivatives, read the contracting clause carefully, because the regulator and the protections change.

To confirm the first one yourself, download ESMA's interim register CSV and search for "Payward". You should see Payward Europe Solutions Limited with the Central Bank of Ireland as home regulator and an authorisation date of 25 June 2025. Our guide to firms authorised in Ireland shows the same list alongside the passported firms.

What "Payward Ireland Ltd" on your statement means

If you see a payment to or from "Payward Ireland Ltd", it is almost certainly Kraken. The name is that of the e-money institution that handles your euro balance, and it is also what Irish bank customers search for when they spot an unfamiliar line. A banking app may show a longer descriptor, a reference code or only a truncated name, and we did not capture a real statement line, so treat the exact wording as unverified.

The practical test is simple. Open your Kraken account, find the deposit or withdrawal in the history, and match the date and amount against your bank. If it matches, it is yours. If it does not, do not click links in emails or texts about it: Kraken lookalikes are a standard scam pattern, and our crypto scams guide shows what they look like.

Putting euro in: the routes

Kraken's deposit table, last read on 5 October 2026, lists these euro routes. The table is a global one, and our fetch was geo-served outside Ireland, so confirm the options inside your own account.

Apple Pay and Google Pay are supported in the Kraken app, with payment fees that Kraken does not state as a percentage on its fee page. A SWIFT route exists at €3 plus a €4 minimum and is rarely the right choice for an Irish customer.

Here is what the card route means in euro. A €200 deposit by card would cost €7.50 (3.75%) plus €0.25, so €7.75, before you have bought anything. The same €200 by SEPA is listed as free. The bank-transfer route is slower and cheaper, which is the usual trade. Our guide to buying crypto by bank transfer walks through SEPA and open banking from an Irish bank account.

Fees on the trading side

Kraken has two ways to buy. The simple buy and sell screen charges a 1% trading fee, 1.5% for custom orders, plus a spread that varies with volatility, asset and order size. On a €500 buy, the 1% fee is €5 and the spread comes on top, and you will not see the spread as a line item. Kraken+ subscribers have the fee waived up to $10,000 of monthly volume, though spreads and card fees still apply. A small-balance convert tool charges a fixed 3%.

Kraken Pro is the order-book interface. The fee page, as we read it, listed a base tier of 0.40% maker and 0.80% taker, falling to 0.06% and 0.16% at $1 million of 30-day volume and lower beyond. Older Kraken pricing was 0.25% and 0.40% at the base tier, and the page we saw was served for Ukraine, with a warning that fees may be inaccurate. That is a clear case of "check from your own account": the direction of travel may be different from what we saw. Simple-buy volume does not count towards the Pro tiers. Staking carries a 20% commission on rewards for flexible on-chain staking.

Getting money back out

Withdrawals to an Irish bank go by SEPA. Our research file did not capture Kraken's euro withdrawal fee table, so we cannot confirm a number; a figure of about €1 is commonly cited, but we could not confirm it, so read the number on the withdrawal screen, which shows it before you confirm. A PayPal deposit, as noted, sits behind a 72-hour hold before withdrawal and cannot be withdrawn back to PayPal. If the bank rejects or queries an incoming transfer, see our page on why banks block crypto transfers.

Identity checks and limits

Kraken requires identity verification. We did not read the verification levels or the limits attached to them, so we will not quote any. Expect to supply a photo ID and a selfie, and potentially proof of address for higher levels. Budget the time for that before you plan any purchase around a deadline.

Pro, OTC and what suits whom

Kraken Pro is where you will find the order book, limit orders and the lower fee tiers. It is not a different company; it is a different screen on the same account, and it matters only if you trade often or in size.

For very large purchases, Kraken runs an OTC desk. The standard minimum is about USD 50,000, and one locale of the page says USD 100,000, so the honest summary is "ask". Kraken says the OTC spot service is provided by Payward Europe Solutions Ltd, which makes it the Irish-authorised option in that corner of the market. Pricing is described as all-in, with no commission, so the cost is the spread. The OTC page lists the other desks and what to ask each.

Custody, security and incidents: what we could and could not verify

Kraken's terms say what is held where and under which contract; that is worth reading in full rather than relying on a summary from us. We did not find, on the primary pages we read, any fines or enforcement actions against the Irish entities. Our notes carry two items from memory that we did not check against a primary source: a US securities regulator settlement over staking in February 2023 and a US sanctions-related settlement in November 2022. We do not repeat details of them here because we have not verified them. If those matter to your decision, search the regulators' own pages. We also did not verify any cold-storage percentage or proof-of-reserves programme.

Tax records and reporting

We did not test Kraken's export tools, so we will not describe them. Irish rules are the same whatever the platform: swaps and spending are disposals for CGT, and your records must show cost, date and euro value. From 1 January 2026, authorised providers began collecting information for the DAC8 reporting regime, with first returns due on 31 May 2027. Read our crypto tax guide and the DAC8 explainer, and remember Budget 2027 is on 6 October 2026, so re-check rates after it.

How to verify the claims yourself

Start with Kraken's EEA terms for the entities and register numbers, then search ESMA's interim register CSV for Payward. The Central Bank's MiCA page explains how its authorisations work. Finally, compare the fee schedule shown in your logged-in account against what we describe, and tell us if they differ. For wider context, our comparison of exchanges for Ireland puts Kraken next to the passported firms.

This is general information, not personal financial, tax or legal advice. Crypto can lose value quickly.