The tie-up combines Franklin Templeton’s asset management with Kraken’s trading infrastructure, building on $30B in tokenized equity volume since 2025.
Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, and asset manager Franklin Templeton said Tuesday they will build a range of blockchain-based investment offerings, from tokenized yield products and tokenized equities to custody services. The tie-up brings together Franklin Templeton’s multi-year push into onchain asset management and Kraken’s retail-driven crypto infrastructure, anchored by the more than $30 billion in trading volume that Kraken’s xStocks tokenized equities platform has processed since 2025.
The partnership targets institutional investors directly. In certain jurisdictions, it could also extend actively managed onchain products to retail Kraken users, a move that would widen distribution beyond the institutional tokenized Treasury market that has drawn heavy attention from BlackRock, Fidelity, and JPMorgan over the past two years.
Kraken’s xStocks platform has been a live test of demand for tokenized traditional assets. The $30 billion in cumulative volume since 2025 gives the Payward-Franklin Templeton partnership a concrete baseline, not a theoretical one.
xStocks allows users to trade blockchain-based representations of equities. The platform’s volume shows that a subset of crypto traders will use onchain rails for assets they could otherwise buy through a brokerage. That demand is the foundation on which Payward and Franklin Templeton plan to layer yield products, actively managed strategies, and a tokenized money-market solution.
Franklin Templeton built its blockchain-based products from the asset management side, developing BENJI, a suite of tokenized money market funds. Payward built exchange infrastructure and a tokenized equities venue. The collaboration merges those approaches. Franklin Templeton supplies the fund vehicles; Kraken supplies distribution, custody infrastructure, and a user base that has already proved it will trade tokenized equities.
Kraken plans to integrate Franklin Templeton’s BENJI funds into its platform. The funds would become a cash-management and collateral tool for institutional clients. That integration matters because it addresses a real friction point: moving cash between traditional banking and crypto markets.
Tokenized Treasury funds offer a yield tied to government securities while operating on blockchain infrastructure. When those funds sit on the same exchange where a firm trades crypto, they can serve as margin collateral that moves continuously, not just during banking hours. The BENJI integration positions Kraken as a venue where an institutional desk can keep collateral onchain and earning a yield around the clock.
Analysts view tokenized Treasury funds as one of the fastest-growing sectors in digital assets because they combine yield with operational flexibility. Franklin Templeton’s BENJI suite is part of that wave. Embedding BENJI directly into Kraken’s platform could attract institutions that want to keep collateral onchain without sacrificing a government-security return, making Kraken more competitive against trading venues that still rely on fiat rails.
Anchorage’s USDG Pullback Exposes Bank-Stablecoin Tension illustrates the friction that arises when traditional banking constraints meet onchain settlement. The Payward-Franklin Templeton tie-up attempts to solve a different piece of that puzzle: making tokenized assets practical for institutional trading and cash management.
The firms said they will explore actively managed tokenized investment products that could trade onchain. This moves beyond the passive tokenization of existing instruments and into portfolio management strategies executed on blockchain networks.
Current tokenized offerings, such as Treasury funds and tokenized equities, largely replicate conventional assets on a blockchain ledger. An actively managed onchain product would bundle strategies–asset allocation, rebalancing, yield optimization–within a tokenized wrapper, creating a new category of investment vehicle. If the firms deliver a compliant, liquid actively managed product, they could open a pipeline for portfolio strategies that settle onchain with the same finality as a crypto trade.
The products could reach institutional investors and, in some jurisdictions, retail Kraken users. That retail angle widens the potential distribution from a narrow institutional base to a broad crypto-native audience that has already shown appetite for tokenized equities on xStocks. The retail pathway depends on local regulations, however, and represents a variable timeline.
While Payward and Franklin Templeton build the investment products, compliance infrastructure is scaling in parallel. Crypto analytics firm Elliptic said it will expand its AI-powered monitoring tools as stablecoins and tokenized finance grow rapidly, CEO Simone Maini told the press. The expansion signals that the risk-management layer required for institutional tokenized products is maturing at the same pace as the products themselves.
Tokenized equities and money market funds will raise the same anti-money laundering and sanctions-screening requirements as any other financial instrument. Elliptic’s move underscores that the ecosystem is not just about product launches; it is also about building the surveillance rails that regulators will demand before granting wider access.
The partnership announcement is the opening of a long game. Concrete milestones will determine whether the setup translates into flow.
The broader crypto market continues to absorb traditional finance’s expansion onto blockchain rails. The Payward-Franklin Templeton partnership, backed by a $30 billion proof of concept in tokenized equities, gives traders a concrete set of checkpoints to gauge whether tokenized investment products shift from a niche experiment to a standard trading tool.
Drafted by the AlphaScala research model and grounded in primary market data – live prices, fundamentals, SEC filings, hedge-fund holdings, and insider activity. Each story is checked against AlphaScala publishing rules before release. Educational coverage, not personalized advice.