Franklin Templeton has entered a groundbreaking partnership with MoonPay, connecting the asset manager’s Benji Technology Platform to MoonPay Trade’s institutional infrastructure. This collaboration provides eligible institutions with a streamlined onchain pathway, facilitating transactions between supported stablecoins and Franklin Templeton’s tokenized money market fund products.
Through this integration, institutions can seamlessly convert stablecoins—such as USDC and USDT—into tokenized money market fund exposure and back again. This is achieved via MoonPay’s sophisticated quote, routing, and execution systems, effectively eliminating the need for institutions to onboard multiple platforms separately. This modern approach is expected to enhance treasury management, portfolio rebalancing, and collateral allocation processes, which institutions increasingly wish to manage onchain.
Franklin Templeton has established its Benji Technology Platform as the cornerstone of its blockchain-enabled recordkeeping and transfer agency infrastructure. The firm previously utilized the platform to introduce what it claims is the world’s first U.S.-registered mutual fund utilizing blockchain for transaction processing. Looking ahead, the firm plans to launch a fully tokenized UCITS fund in Luxembourg in 2024, followed by a retail tokenized fund in Singapore in 2025. Additionally, in April 2026, Franklin Templeton announced the establishment of Franklin Crypto, which will serve as a dedicated digital asset investment division stemming from its acquisition of the crypto investment firm 250 Digital.
Sandy Kaul, head of innovation and digital assets at Franklin Templeton, articulated the firm’s vision for 2026, dubbing it “the year of the universal liquidity layer.” This future, as envisioned by Kaul, will see stablecoins, tokenized funds, and digital currencies becoming increasingly interoperable across trading, lending, and collateral management platforms.
At the helm of the partnership from MoonPay is Caroline Pham, who leads the firm’s institutional division after previously serving as acting chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Pham underscored the potential of digital assets to offer enhanced liquidity and capital efficiency for institutions engaged in the evolving onchain financial ecosystem.
This partnership represents a significant expansion for MoonPay, moving beyond its traditional realms of crypto trading and payment processing to embrace tokenized real-world assets. The company boasts a remarkable customer base of over 30 million across 180 countries and serves more than 500 enterprise clients.
The tokenized money market fund sector has experienced notable growth in recent years as asset managers aim to leverage blockchain technology to provide short-duration, yield-bearing products on both public and private blockchains. Franklin Templeton, alongside other major players like BlackRock, is positioning itself to capture this burgeoning market. The integration with MoonPay adds a vital distribution and liquidity layer, enabling the firm’s tokenized products to benefit from programmatic entry and exit from fund exposure within onchain workflows, as opposed to relying solely on traditional transfer agency processes.
