Payward, Franklin Templeton Plan Onchain Investment Products

Tokenized Funds Move Toward Managed Strategies

A central goal of the collaboration is to explore actively managed tokenized investment products that could trade directly onchain. The structure would make professionally managed strategies available through blockchain-native infrastructure, with Franklin Templeton managing the underlying strategies and Payward issuing and distributing the tokenized products.

The partnership combines Franklin Templeton’s roughly $1.74 trillion in assets under management with Payward’s xStocks tokenized equities framework. Payward’s xStocks platform has processed more than $30 billion in trading volume since launching in 2025, making it a key infrastructure piece in the collaboration.

Kraken’s xStocks framework is expected to host Franklin Templeton’s actively managed strategies. The framework offers tokenized 1:1 representations of U.S. stocks and ETFs for eligible non-U.S. clients, with extended trading hours and DeFi composability that can include lending and decentralized exchange trading.

Payward also announced a partnership with Nasdaq earlier in 2026 to develop specialty equity token designs supporting automated corporate actions, proxy voting and dividend distribution. That effort sits alongside the Franklin Templeton collaboration as Payward expands tokenized market infrastructure beyond basic asset wrappers.

BENJI Integration Adds Collateral and Yield Focus

Kraken plans to integrate BENJI, Franklin Templeton’s suite of tokenized money market funds, into its platform. BENJI tokens represent shares in the Franklin Onchain U.S. Government Money Fund and related vehicles, giving the partnership a direct link to tokenized money market infrastructure.

BENJI tokens could be used as collateral or to generate yield in digital markets. The planned integration is framed as a way to expand institutional collateral and yield options for onchain capital, while giving institutional trading clients blockchain-based alternatives to traditional treasury operations.

Tokenized Treasury funds are viewed as one of the fastest-growing sectors in digital assets because they offer yields tied to government securities while operating on blockchain rails. These funds can allow institutions to move collateral around the clock instead of waiting for banking hours or multiday settlement periods.

Franklin Templeton has pursued blockchain integration since 2018. The firm launched FOBXX in April 2021, described as the first U.S.-registered mutual fund to record share ownership on a public blockchain. FOBXX now operates across Stellar, Solana, Base, Polygon, Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche and other networks.

March 2026 brought another Franklin Templeton tokenization push when the firm partnered with Ondo Finance to tokenize five ETFs for onchain distribution and around-the-clock trading through crypto wallets. The following month, Franklin Templeton launched its Franklin Crypto unit through the acquisition of 250 Digital, a CoinFund spinoff.

Part of Franklin Templeton’s acquisition of 250 Digital was settled using BENJI tokens. That detail shows BENJI has already been used beyond simple fund representation and is part of Franklin Templeton’s broader digital asset infrastructure strategy.

Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Payward and Kraken, said the collaboration reflects a shift in how financial products can be created. “What collaborations like this one unlock is a new class of products that wouldn’t have been possible even three years ago: assets that carry the credibility of multi-decade managers and the programmability of digital infrastructure.”

Sandy Kaul, head of digital assets and innovation at Franklin Templeton, said the work is focused on making onchain assets useful for both digital-native and institutional customers. “By expanding the utility of BENJI and exploring new tokenized products, our work with Payward reflects the growing need to serve both digital-native and institutional customers with solutions built for how capital increasingly moves onchain.”

The collaboration is not only about putting existing fund wrappers onchain. The companies are also pursuing products built around transparency, programmability and flexibility, with traditional assets gaining blockchain-native features such as 24/7 availability and composability with decentralized finance protocols.

The disclosed risks include regulatory uncertainty, blockchain security vulnerabilities, pricing and settlement accuracy, and operational factors. Product availability also varies by jurisdiction, meaning access will not be uniform across all markets.

Both Payward and Franklin Templeton participate in DTCC tokenization working groups. The partnership places both firms inside a broader institutional effort to test tokenized securities infrastructure and link regulated financial products with crypto-native systems.