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Franklin Templeton is integrating its BENJI tokenized money market fund and other tokenized products into MoonPay Trade, the institutional on-chain execution platform launched in late May. The partnership lets institutions swap between stablecoins like USDC and USDT and Franklin's Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund through a single API that handles cross-chain routing, trade execution, settlement, and collateral movement across more than 200 blockchains.
MoonPay said the move is expected to serve as the foundation for a broader strategic relationship with Franklin Templeton, and frames it as one of MoonPay Institutional CEO Caroline Pham's first major moves since joining the firm after her tenure as acting CFTC chair. Beyond the swap flow, the integration opens up onchain workflows including treasury management, liquidity provision, collateral, and portfolio rebalancing using the tokenized fund.
Why it matters
Tokenized money market funds become useful only when they can move with the speed and programmability of the broader digital asset ecosystem, Franklin Templeton Head of Innovation & Digital Assets Sandy Kaul said, framing the deal as plumbing rather than a marketing partnership. With roughly $1.74 trillion in AUM, Franklin is one of the largest traditional asset managers with a live tokenized product, and BENJI has been live onchain since its 2021 launch — making this less a pilot and more an infrastructure move for institutional desks that already hold the fund.
The deal also signals where MoonPay is heading under its institutional arm. MoonPay Trade is built on the back of three recent acquisitions — cross-chain routing and liquidity firm Decent, Solana execution layer DFlow, and crypto key-management infrastructure Sodot — and the Franklin integration is the first major institutional asset manager to plug directly into that stack. For TradFi allocators, it compresses what would normally be a multi-vendor setup into a single institutional-grade entry point.
Frequently asked questions
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What is Franklin Templeton's BENJI tokenized fund?
BENJI is the ticker for Franklin Templeton's Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX), launched in 2021 as the first U.S.-registered mutual fund to use a public blockchain at launch. It is a tokenized money market fund issued by an asset manager with roughly $1.74 trillion in AUM.
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What is MoonPay Trade and what does the integration enable?
MoonPay Trade is MoonPay's institutional-grade onchain execution platform, launched in late May. It provides a single API for institutions to access 200+ blockchains, handling cross-chain routing, trade execution, settlement, collateral movement, and tokenized asset transactions with full compliance.
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Which MoonPay acquisitions support MoonPay Trade?
MoonPay Trade is supported by three recent acquisitions: Decent (cross-chain routing and liquidity), DFlow (a Solana execution layer also used by Coinbase and Phantom), and Sodot (crypto key-management infrastructure). The Franklin Templeton integration is the first major institutional asset manager to plug directly…
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Who is Caroline Pham and why does her role matter here?
Caroline Pham is MoonPay Institutional's CEO, having joined the firm after serving as acting chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Franklin Templeton partnership is one of her first major moves in the role, bringing a regulator-friendly profile to an institutional launch.
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How does this fit Franklin Templeton's broader tokenization strategy?
Franklin Templeton has been expanding BENJI's footprint through a Payward (Kraken parent) partnership to explore new onchain investments, a Binance institutional off-exchange collateral program, the April agreement to acquire CoinFund spinoff 250 Digital, and an Ondo Finance collaboration to tokenize a suite of ETFs.
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