Paxos Expands Its Regulated Reach With Acquisition of Fordefi

The company framed the deal as central to its mission of powering a compliant and scalable digital-asset ecosystem. By bringing Fordefi's architecture into the Paxos stack, the firm is aiming to deliver a custody layer supporting institutional needs across tokenization, stablecoin issuance, and emerging on-chain payment flows. Paxos underscored that the acquisition further enables it to provide enterprises with the tools needed to safely participate in blockchain-based financial systems while meeting high regulatory expectations.

In its announcement, Paxos stressed the strategic rationale for bringing the two parties together. Fordefi's MPC-driven wallet platform was purposefully built for institutions facing challenges in security, policy management, and connectivity to DeFi. Integrating this infrastructure with Paxos's highly regulated custody framework will, according to the company, grant clients a single place where asset protection, transaction governance, and access to blockchains can be managed via one regulated provider.

Paxos highlighted that the acquisition fortifies the firm's position as a regulated custodian in a way that enables it to support sophisticated digital-asset operations. The company already handles various regulated assets, such as USDP, Pax Gold, and the PayPal USD stablecoin, under the regulatory oversight of watchdogs like the New York Department of Financial Services. Adding Fordefi into its infrastructure, Paxos intends to expand this regulated foundation into parts of digital-asset activity that involve more sophisticated wallet control and multi-chain connectivity.

Fordefi will continue to operate in the short term but will begin integrating into the broader technology and operations at Paxos. To that end, Paxos detailed, this will be a phase-in approach to ensure continuity with existing clients while setting the stage to accomplish a more profound technical merge over time. The company framed the integration as part of its drive to provide institutions "a single, trusted platform" for the issuance of tokens, the management of digital assets, and the development of sophisticated settlement and payment workflows.

Paxos also highlighted Fordefi's wallet capabilities as key to enabling institutions to move beyond basic custody. Fordefi's platform was designed to give enterprises granular control over transaction policies, wallet permissions, and internal governance rules, elements critical for firms operating in highly regulated environments or handling large transaction volumes. Paxos intends to bring these capabilities in-house to support a wider number of real-world institutional use-cases as blockchain adoption widens.

The acquisition aligns with Paxos' long-term ambition of making digital assets safer and operationally viable for businesses around the world. With more and more interest in tokenization and blockchain-based settlement from financial institutions, corporates, and fintechs, Paxos finds increasing demand for integrated services rather than fragmented solutions. In such a backdrop, the firm framed the acquisition of Fordefi as a response to this shift, underlining that today, institutions expect the same level of compliance, security, and reliability they receive in traditional financial systems.

Paxos framed the acquisition as a strategic step in strengthening its institutional infrastructure, with CEO and co-founder Charles Cascarilla outlining how the two companies’ capabilities align. Cascarilla said, “We’ve built Paxos as a neutral, enterprise-grade platform that ushers the world’s leading enterprises into the digital asset economy. Fordefi has built an impressive stack and customer base founded on easy-to-use APIs and seamless web3 connectivity. Market participants require a regulated platform partner that meets their range of complex custody needs. Together, Paxos and Fordefi provide customers with a world-class custody solution built upon advanced wallet technology and regulated, qualified custody. We’re excited to welcome Fordefi to our team as we enter this new phase of growth.”

Paxos is committed to regulatory compliance in that its infrastructure is designed to meet high standards for consumer protection, capital requirements, and oversight. By integrating a wallet platform built specifically for institutional operations, Paxos wants to ensure that enterprises are able to access blockchain-based tools without compromising regulatory expectations. Providing this assurance while expanding functionality was how the company framed the acquisition.

The deal further reflects a wider trend: institutions are increasingly seeking safe, regulated, and enterprise-ready ways of interacting with digital assets, turning to providers that can unify multiple layers of the stack. Paxos positioned itself to respond directly to this demand by building an infrastructure where custody, wallet management, asset issuance, and process governance are tightly integrated. The Fordefi acquisition is framed as a foundational step toward offering this cohesive experience.

According to the announcement Paxos considered itself a leader in compliant digital-asset infrastructure, and integrating Fordefi's technology further reinforces this trajectory. Providing an end-to-end platform supported by regulated custody, sophisticated wallet controls, and connectivity to evolving on-chain applications, Paxos intends to power a wide range of enterprise-level blockchain solutions. It pointed out that it believes the building of this infrastructure layer is important for safe growth in global, tokenized financial systems.

With blockchain adoption accelerating across industries, Paxos contends that institutions will increasingly need unified, compliant, and technically advanced systems to manage assets and develop new digital-asset services. Fordefi's acquisition represents the latest move by the firm to build out that ecosystem, enabling enterprises to engage in the on-chain economy on a platform based on regulated foundations and purpose-built wallet technology.