Franklin Templeton, Kraken Parent Payward Team Up to Tokenize Wall Street Products

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In brief - Kraken's parent Payward and Franklin Templeton are partnering to bring traditional financial products—including tokenized equities and yield products—onto blockchain networks. - The deal includes integrating Franklin Templeton's BENJI tokenized money market funds into Kraken's platform as collateral and cash management tools for institutional clients. - The collaboration reflects a broader Wall Street trend, with Franklin Templeton also recently launching a dedicated crypto division via its acquisition of investment firm 250 Digital. Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, and Franklin Templeton announced Tuesday a strategic collaboration aimed at moving mainstream financial products onto blockchain networks—a deal that underscores how the boundary between Wall Street and digital asset markets continues to erode. The partnership pairs Franklin Templeton's global asset management and tokenization expertise with Payward's crypto-native trading, custody, and on-chain infrastructure, spanning tokenized equities, qualified custody, actively managed yield products and direct access to institutional crypto liquidity through Kraken's over-the-counter and prime services. Kraken also plans to integrate BENJI, Franklin Templeton's suite of tokenized money market funds, into its platform, where the funds could serve as collateral or cash management tools for institutional trading clients seeking blockchain-based alternatives to traditional treasury operations. “Payward and Franklin Templeton are building toward a model of finance where the distinction between traditional assets and digital infrastructure no longer holds,” said Payward and Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi, in a statement. “The convergence between these two worlds is only going to deepen, and 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." Payward's xStocks framework—which has processed more than $30 billion in volume since launching last year—will explore new actively managed investments on-chain with Franklin Templeton, making strategies from one of the world's largest asset managers tradeable on a blockchain. The firms plan to make some of those products available to institutional investors and, in certain jurisdictions, to retail Kraken users as well. The announcement arrives as Franklin Templeton has accelerated its push into digital finance. The firm recently launched a dedicated cryptocurrency division, Franklin Crypto, anchored by its planned acquisition of crypto investment firm 250 Digital. “The focus should be on making on-chain assets more functional for the full range of market participants once they are there,” said Sandy Kaul, head of digital assets and innovation at Franklin Templeton, in a statement. “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 on-chain.”

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