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Franklin Templeton has entered a long-term strategic partnership with Singapore-based digital asset exchange DigiFT to distribute its Benji Technology Platform to institutional clients in Asia, the companies announced Tuesday.
Under the arrangement, DigiFT will offer Franklin Templeton's tokenised fund products through its Monetary Authority of Singapore-licensed platform. DigiFT holds MAS Capital Markets Services and Recognised Market Operator licences, as well as Hong Kong SFC Type 1 and Type 4 licences — a regulatory footprint that covers institutional investors across two major Asian financial centres.
The Benji Platform offers intraday yield accrual (a feature Franklin Templeton has filed a patent for), 24/7/365 transferability, and near-instant on-chain settlement. Franklin Templeton has positioned the product around three institutional use cases: treasury management, yield infrastructure, and off-exchange collateral.
"DigiFT is committed to bringing institutional-grade digital asset solutions to sophisticated investors," Henry Zhang, DigiFT chief executive, said in a statement. "Our partnership with Franklin Templeton enables us to offer our clients access to the Benji Platform's innovative tokenised fund products."
Chetan Karkhanis, Franklin Templeton's senior vice president of digital asset partnership development, said the deal was about extending access. "We are excited to partner with DigiFT to bring the benefits of the Benji Platform to their institutional investor base in Asia," he said.
Franklin Templeton manages $1.74 trillion in assets and was the first asset manager to launch a blockchain-based mutual fund, in 2021. The DigiFT deal is its second major distribution arrangement this month: on May 12 the firm announced a partnership with Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, to offer Benji products through Kraken's institutional platform.
The timing sits against rapid growth in the tokenised real-world asset market. Total tokenised RWA assets expanded from $5.5 billion to $18.6 billion during 2025, according to figures cited in Tuesday's announcement, with tokenised US government securities the largest single category. Franklin Templeton's FOBXX – launched on the Stellar blockchain and subsequently expanded to Polygon, Ethereum, Arbitrum and other networks – has been one of the leading products in that category.
For DigiFT, which has focused on MAS-regulated digital asset infrastructure since its founding, distributing products from one of the world's largest asset managers extends its offering well beyond crypto-native assets. For Franklin Templeton, the deal broadens Benji's institutional distribution across Asia without requiring the firm to build its own exchange infrastructure in those markets.
