Kraken parent Payward will add Franklin Templeton’s BENJI tokenized money market fund to its platform as collateral and cash management, allowing clients to earn returns on idle dollars on-chain.
Summary
- Payward, the parent company of Kraken, has entered into a strategic partnership with Franklin Templeton to bring tokenized stocks, yield products, and the BENJI money market fund to the blockchain rails for institutional and select retail clients.
- Franklin Templeton’s BENJI tokenized money market fund will be integrated into Kraken’s platform as cash management and collateral infrastructure, while Payward’s xStocks framework, which has processed over $30 billion in transaction volume since its launch, will co-develop new actively managed products on-chain.
- The deal comes as Franklin Templeton deepens its crypto footprint by acquiring crypto investment firm 250 Digital and expanding its Franklin Crypto division, signaling that one of the world’s largest asset managers is treating blockchain distribution as a core line of business rather than a side project.
Kraken parent company Payward and Franklin Templeton have announced a strategic partnership to tokenize traditional financial products and distribute them through Kraken’s exchange infrastructure, according to a report from Decipher.
BENJI Meets xStocks in $30 Billion Tokenization Partnership
The immediate result is an integration of Franklin Templeton’s BENJI tokenized money market fund into the Kraken platform, where it will serve as a collateral and cash management tool for institutional clients, effectively allowing professional traders to park idle capital in a yield-generating on-chain dollar instrument without leaving the Kraken ecosystem.
BENJI, which Franklin Templeton launched in 2021 on the Stellar blockchain before expanding to Polygon, Arbitrum and other networks, is one of the longest-running tokenized money market funds in the industry and a direct competitor to BlackRock’s BUIDL, which recently surpassed $2.3 billion in assets under management. By incorporating BENJI into Kraken’s collateral framework, Franklin Templeton gains a distribution channel that reaches both institutional desks and the exchange’s large retail base in jurisdictions where the product is available, while Kraken gains a regulated, yield-generating dollar instrument that it can offer as an alternative to dormant USDT or USDC balances held in trading accounts.
Beyond BENJI, the two companies plan to use Payward’s xStocks framework as the foundation for new actively managed on-chain products, making Franklin Templeton’s investment strategies available to institutions and retail investors in specific jurisdictions. xStocks, a preview crypto.news As noted in the story, it has processed over $30 billion in trading volume since launching last year, building a tokenized equity infrastructure that now spans over 50 US stocks and ETFs and positions Kraken as one of the leading venues for traditional on-chain asset exposure outside of dedicated RWA platforms like Ondo Finance.
Franklin Crypto, 250 Digital and the race to own on-chain distribution
The Payward partnership is one part of a broader push by Franklin Templeton to build a vertically integrated crypto and tokenization business. The company has advanced its dedicated cryptocurrency division, Franklin Crypto, through the acquisition of cryptocurrency investment firm 250 Digital, adding research, portfolio management and distribution capabilities that complement its existing tokenized fund products. Franklin Templeton’s crypto.news history.
Collectively, Franklin Templeton now has a spot XRP ETF, a multi-chain tokenized money market fund, a cryptocurrency investment arm through 250 Digital, and a distribution partnership with one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. That stack puts it in a structurally different position from most traditional asset managers, which are still debating whether to introduce a single tokenized product rather than building an end-to-end on-chain distribution network. like a crypto.news As the story about BlackRock’s second tokenized fund filing with the SEC before Securitize showed, the race among the largest traditional asset managers to own on-chain distribution is now openly competitive, with BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and Fidelity simultaneously moving into tokenized product lines that would have been considered experimental as recently as 2023.
