Franklin Templeton has brought its BENJI tokenized money market fund onto MoonPay Trade, creating a new on-chain route for institutional clients moving between stablecoins and tokenized fund exposure. In a statement released Tuesday, the companies said institutions can use MoonPay’s trading system to swap USDC, USDT, and other stablecoins for Franklin Templeton’s tokenized money market fund.
The two firms also said the arrangement is expected to serve as a starting point for a broader strategic relationship. For BENJI holders, the integration opens direct access to stablecoin liquidity. For institutions looking at tokenized money market products, it creates a fresh on-chain access point. Franklin Templeton said the structure can support treasury management, portfolio rebalancing, collateral use, and liquidity provision.
BENJI gets a new institutional route on-chain
Sandy Kaul, Franklin Templeton’s head of innovation and digital assets, said tokenized money market funds become more useful when they can move with the speed and programmability of digital asset networks. She said working with MoonPay adds another trusted gateway between stablecoin liquidity and tokenized fund exposure.
BENJI refers to the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund, also known as FOBXX. The fund launched in 2021 and was described as the first U.S.-registered mutual fund to use a public blockchain. In its latest quarterly report, Franklin Templeton said it had about $1.74 trillion in assets under management, placing it among the largest traditional asset managers active in tokenization.
MoonPay Trade pushes deeper into tokenized fund infrastructure
MoonPay said the deal expands its institutional business beyond crypto, fiat, and stablecoin services. The announcement followed the appointment of former acting Commodity Futures Trading Commission chair Caroline Pham as CEO of MoonPay Institutional. Pham said tokenized money market funds can improve liquidity and capital efficiency when institutions have access to the on-chain financial system. She also said the partnership with Franklin Templeton on liquidity and collateral solutions shows the infrastructure now in place for institutional digital asset adoption.
MoonPay introduced MoonPay Trade in late May as an institutional on-chain execution platform. The company said the product gives enterprises and institutions a single API for access to more than 200 blockchains, with cross-chain routing, trade execution, settlement, collateral movement, and tokenized asset transactions under compliance controls. The platform also draws on infrastructure from MoonPay’s recent acquisitions, including Decent for cross-chain routing and liquidity, DFlow for trading technology, and Sodot for crypto key management.
Franklin Templeton keeps expanding BENJI across crypto channels
Franklin Templeton has been widening BENJI’s footprint through other crypto partnerships as well. The asset manager has worked with Payward, Kraken’s parent company, on tokenizing additional traditional investment products. It has also partnered with Binance to support BENJI as off-exchange collateral. In April, Franklin Templeton agreed to acquire 250 Digital, a CoinFund spinoff, to grow its crypto investment business. The firm is also working with Ondo Finance on tokenizing a group of ETFs.
MoonPay has been adding other access points to its on-chain business. As previously reported by crypto.news, the company launched a dedicated app inside ChatGPT’s App Store on May 22. The app lets users create crypto purchase links without leaving OpenAI’s chatbot interface, and MoonPay described it as the first crypto on-ramp integrated into ChatGPT. The app supports Bitcoin, XRP, Ethereum, Solana, USDC, and more than 100 other digital assets across over 30 chains. After a checkout link is generated, users complete KYC and payment on moonpay.com using a card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or bank transfer.