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Franklin Templeton, the US investment house with $1.69 trillion in assets under management (as of 31 October), is working with Singapore’s DBS Bank to launch the Asian city-state’s first money market fund with a tokenized register. This represents an example of “fractional” ownership of a fund through the use of blockchain technology.

The fund, called the Franklin OnChain US Dollar Short-Term Money Market Fund, can eventually be accessed for as little as $20, the firms said in a statement yesterday. The tokenized fund mirrors the strategy of a Luxembourg-domiciled FTIF Franklin US Dollar Short-Term Money Market Fund, which has a 30-year track record.

The fund has received approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to be offered as an authorised scheme. It is now available to DBS’s wealth clients and accredited investors through the bank’s relationship managers, with retail access expected in the first quarter of 2026.

Explaining how the fund works, the parties said it uses Franklin Templeton’s proprietary Benji Technology Platform for blockchain-integrated recordkeeping.

“As investor interest in tokenized funds and digital assets continues to accelerate, we are excited to collaborate with DBS, Singapore’s largest bank, to bring this tokenized fund to the retail market,” said Tariq Ahmad, head of APAC at Franklin Templeton.

James Tan, group head of investment products and advisory at DBS Bank, said: “Tokenization is reshaping the way people invest, and we want to make sure these benefits extend beyond institutional investors. By availing Singapore’s first tokenized retail fund to our customers, at a minimum investment sum of just $20, we are making it simpler and more convenient for them to start investing and build resilience through market cycles.”

Franklin Templeton has been involved in the digital asset ecosystem since 2018 and developed its Benji Technology Platform as a proprietary blockchain-integrated stack to facilitate the trading, management, and administration of token-based investments. Using this platform, Franklin Templeton launched what it said was the world’s first US-registered mutual fund in 2021 employing blockchain-integrated technology to process transactions and record share ownership. In 2024, it used the Benji platform to launch the first fully tokenized UCITS fund in Luxembourg, and in 2025 launched the first retail tokenized fund in Singapore.