Franklin Templeton, a prominent asset management firm with approximately $1.7 trillion in assets under management, has entered into a strategic partnership with MoonPay, a company specializing in crypto payments infrastructure. This collaboration aims to enhance access to tokenized financial products, as announced on Tuesday.
The initial phase of this partnership involves the integration of Franklin Templeton’s Benji Technology Platform with MoonPay Trade. This integration will allow eligible institutional users to seamlessly swap between stablecoins and gain exposure to Franklin Templeton’s tokenized money market funds directly on the blockchain.
For MoonPay, this marks a significant transition as it expands its offerings beyond traditional crypto, fiat, and stablecoin transactions into the realm of tokenized fund shares, which operate similarly to on-chain assets. Leveraging the execution and routing infrastructure of MoonPay Trade, this integration simplifies the process of accessing Franklin’s tokenized money market offerings. In doing so, it provides enhanced pathways to stablecoin liquidity, facilitating various financial activities such as treasury management, collateral optimization, and portfolio rebalancing.
Sandy Kaul, Franklin Templeton’s Head of Innovation and Digital Assets, highlighted the advantages of tokenized money market funds, noting that their utility increases when they can operate with the agility and programmability inherent in the broader digital asset ecosystem. She emphasized the importance of collaborating with MoonPay as it creates a further trusted channel for institutions to navigate between stablecoin liquidity and tokenized fund exposure.
Adding to this sentiment, Caroline Pham, CEO of MoonPay Institutional, pointed out that while digital assets like tokenized money market funds offer benefits such as improved liquidity and capital efficiency, those advantages can only be realized if institutions have reliable access to the on-chain financial ecosystem.
The partnership is described by both firms as a foundational step towards expanded collaboration in the realms of tokenized finance and institutional participation in on-chain markets.
