Franklin Templeton is expanding its digital asset strategy through a new partnership with MoonPay that will allow institutional investors to move between stablecoins and the asset manager’s tokenized money market fund through an onchain workflow.
The integration connects Franklin Templeton’s Benji technology platform with MoonPay Trade’s infrastructure, creating a path for eligible institutions to exchange backed stablecoins for exposure to the firm’s tokenized money market fund and back again without leaving the blockchain network.
The partnership comes as Franklin Templeton pushes deeper into digital assets. In April, the $1.74 trillion asset manager announced plans to launch Franklin Crypto, a dedicated cryptocurrency division anchored by the acquisition of crypto investment firm 250 Digital. The new entity will focus on active crypto investment strategies, while Franklin Templeton continues to build tokenized versions of traditional financial products.
Sandy Kaul, Franklin Templeton’s head of innovation and digital assets, said the company sees 2026 as “the year of the universal liquidity layer,” where stablecoins, tokenized funds and other forms of digital money become interoperable and can be used across trading, lending and collateral.
Kaul said one of the most compelling use cases for institutions is the ability to move stablecoin balances into tokenized money market funds and earn returns around the clock.
“We trade 24/7 in the crypto markets,” she said in an interview with CoinDesk. Unlike traditional money market funds, which typically require investors to hold positions through the end of a trading day to receive interest, tokenized funds can distribute returns based on the precise length of time an investor holds the asset, she said.
According to Kaul, the institutional demand for that functionality has been great.
“We had a huge demand for this,” she said, referring to the ability to move between stablecoins and tokenized money market funds at any time while maintaining exposure to income-generating assets.
The partnership also reflects MoonPay’s expansion beyond crypto trading and payments for real-world tokenized assets, an area that is attracting increasing interest from traditional financial institutions looking to bring regulated investment products on-chain.
