Franklin Templeton links BENJI to stablecoins via MoonPay

Franklin Templeton is integrating its BENJI tokenized money market fund into MoonPay Trade, the firms announced Tuesday. The integration lets institutional users swap BENJI for USDC and USDT and deploy BENJI in onchain workflows such as treasury management, collateral and liquidity provision.

Institutional clients will use MoonPay’s onchain trading infrastructure to route trades between the tokenized fund and stablecoins. MoonPay Trade, launched in late May, offers a single API that provides access to more than 200 blockchains and manages cross-chain routing, trade execution, settlement, collateral movement and tokenized asset transactions with compliance controls.

MoonPay said the integration will form the basis of a broader strategic relationship with Franklin Templeton and expand its services beyond crypto, fiat and stablecoins. MoonPay Trade’s capabilities draw on recent acquisitions, including cross-chain routing and liquidity provider Decent, trading platform DFlow and crypto key-management tool Sodot.

Franklin Templeton characterized the deal as a direct path for BENJI holders to convert into stablecoins and to use the tokenized fund programmatically for tasks such as portfolio rebalancing and using BENJI as collateral. “Tokenized money market funds only become more useful when they can move with the speed and programmability of the broader digital asset ecosystem,” Sandy Kaul, Franklin Templeton’s head of innovation and digital assets, said.

Caroline Pham, CEO of MoonPay Institutional and a former acting Commodity Futures Trading Commission chair, said the platform can help institutions access the liquidity and collateral solutions needed to use tokenized funds in operational workflows. Pham noted the partnership aims to connect tokenized products with onchain liquidity and programmable workflows used by enterprises and treasuries.

Franklin Templeton reported about $1.74 trillion in assets under management in its latest quarterly filing. The firm introduced the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (ticker BENJI) in 2021 as the first U.S.-registered mutual fund to use a public blockchain at launch. Franklin Templeton has pursued further tokenization through partnerships and transactions, including arrangements with the parent company of the Kraken exchange and with Binance to extend BENJI’s use as off-exchange collateral, an April agreement to acquire 250 Digital, and collaboration with Ondo Finance on tokenizing ETFs.

The companies said the integration links tokenized fund exposure directly to stablecoin liquidity and onchain tooling designed for institutional use.