Franklin Templeton and MoonPay open new door for BENJI fund

Franklin Templeton has added its BENJI tokenized money market fund to MoonPay Trade, giving institutional clients a new route between stablecoins and tokenized fund products.

According to a statement released Tuesday, the partnership will allow institutional users to swap USDC, USDT, and other stablecoins for Franklin Templeton’s tokenized money market fund via MoonPay’s on-chain trading platform. The companies said the arrangement is also expected to serve as the basis for a deeper strategic relationship between Franklin Templeton and MoonPay.

Franklin Templeton brings BENJI to MoonPay trade

The integration gives BENJI holders a direct path into stablecoin liquidity, while also creating an on-chain entry point for institutions seeking exposure to tokenized money market products. Franklin Templeton said the setup can support treasury management, portfolio rebalancing, collateral use, and liquidity provision.

Sandy Kaul, Franklin Templeton’s head of innovation and digital assets, said tokenized money market funds become more useful when they can move at the speed and with the programmability of digital asset networks. Kaul added that working with MoonPay creates another trusted gateway between stablecoin liquidity and tokenized fund exposure.

MoonPay said the deal also expands its institutional business beyond crypto, fiat, and stablecoins. The announcement comes after Caroline Pham, former acting chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, joined MoonPay Institutional as CEO.

MoonPay builds out institutional onchain trading

Pham said tokenized money market funds can improve liquidity and capital efficiency when institutions can access the on-chain financial system. She said MoonPay’s partnership with Franklin Templeton on liquidity and collateral solutions illustrates the infrastructure now supporting institutional digital asset adoption.

MoonPay introduced MoonPay Trade in late May as an institutional on-chain execution platform. The company said the platform gives enterprises and institutions a single API to access more than 200 blockchains, cross-chain routing, trade execution, settlement, collateral movement, and tokenized asset transactions, all under compliance controls.

MoonPay Trade also relies on infrastructure from recent MoonPay acquisitions. These include Decent for cross-chain routing and liquidity, DFlow for trading technology, and Sodot for crypto key management.

BENJI expansion continues across crypto platforms

Franklin Templeton, which reported about $1.74 trillion in assets under management in its latest quarterly report, has become one of the largest traditional asset managers active in tokenization. It’s Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund, known as FOBXX or BENJI, launched in 2021 as the first U.S.-registered mutual fund to use a public blockchain.

The asset manager has also expanded BENJI through other crypto partnerships. Franklin Templeton has worked with Payward, the parent company of Kraken, 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 buy 250 Digital, a CoinFund spinoff, to grow its crypto investment business. The firm is also working with Ondo Finance to tokenize a group of ETFs.

MoonPay links onchain access with ChatGPT app

As previously reported by crypto.news, MoonPay launched a dedicated app inside ChatGPT’s App Store on May 22. The app allows users to create crypto purchase links without leaving OpenAI’s chatbot, while MoonPay described itself in its announcement as the first crypto onramp integrated in ChatGPT.

As per the report, MoonPay, the ChatGPT app supports Bitcoin, XRP, Ethereum, Solana, USDC, and more than 100 other digital assets across over 30 chains. After the chatbot generates a checkout link, users complete KYC and payment on moonpay.com using a card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or bank transfer.