Tokenized money market funds and tokenized bank deposits are moving from pilots to early infrastructure as big institutions plan for always on finance.
Quick Summary – TLDR:
- Franklin Templeton is tokenizing money market funds to make access and liquidity available 24/7 through onchain issuance.
- SWIFT is exploring tokenized deposits that represent bank balances onchain, without changing how bank balance sheets work.
- The industry still looks small next to global markets, but the plumbing is being built for continuous settlement.
- Regulation, governance, and key management are still major blockers for broad institutional rollout.
What Happened?
At Consensus Hong Kong 2026, executives from Franklin Templeton, SWIFT, and Ledger said tokenized finance is shifting from experiments into systems that can support real usage. The focus is simple: keep familiar financial products, but make them work in a world that expects always available settlement and onchain access.
Franklin Templeton and Swift say the future of banking is 24/7 and onchain https://t.co/jNJwC0KafP via @coindesk
— Kelly (@mekellwhyy) February 12, 2026
Franklin Templeton wants money market funds to work like the internet
Franklin Templeton is starting with a product institutions already trust: money market funds, a market it pegged at roughly $10 trillion. The pitch is that issuing fund shares directly on blockchain networks can make these funds easier to move and easier to access at any time.
Franklin Templeton’s Chetan Karkhanis said:
By putting shares natively onchain and distributing them through self custody wallets or exchanges, the firm is targeting 24/7 liquidity, not a system that pauses for weekends or market cutoffs. Karkhanis also pointed to operational savings, including shareholder servicing fees that can run about five to 15 basis points, costs that may shrink when ownership and transfers are handled more directly onchain.
SWIFT explores tokenized deposits without rewriting banking
SWIFT’s message was clear: it is not trying to replace banks. Instead, it is looking at how banks can keep holding fiat deposits on their balance sheets, while issuing a regulated token that represents that balance onchain.
Devendra Verma of SWIFT’s digital assets unit said:
SWIFT, which connects more than 11,500 financial institutions globally, is building a blockchain based orchestration layer meant to connect CBDCs, tokenized deposits, and other regulated digital assets to existing payment rails. Verma noted that about 75% of SWIFT payments already reach beneficiaries within 10 minutes, but the bigger goal is to remove the last bits of friction that still come from banking hours, cutoff times, and holiday delays.
Verma framed it as a move toward “24/7, all time availability.”
The market is still small, but the direction is obvious
Even with all the excitement, speakers stressed that tokenized assets remain tiny compared to the traditional system. Karkhanis pointed to roughly $300 billion in stablecoins and about $40 billion in tokenized Treasuries and other real world assets currently onchain. Against more than $200 trillion in global wealth, it is still early.
That gap is exactly why the discussion has shifted toward infrastructure. The idea is not just issuing tokens, but building the ability to settle and move regulated value continuously, with compliance and controls that big institutions can live with.
Key blockers highlighted on the panel included:
- Regulatory clarity across accounting, compliance, and balance sheet treatment.
- Security and governance, especially around institutional key management.
- Interoperability between existing payment systems and new token networks.
Security and key management are the quiet hard part
Ledger’s Jean François Rochet said the hardest questions are often about confidence and control, not only the tech itself.
“How do we do that securely? With trust, with confidence, is the key question,” said Ledger’s Jean-François Rochet.
The broader point from the panel was that institutional adoption depends on tools and processes that reduce operational risk, including how keys are stored, approved, and recovered inside large organizations.
SQ Magazine’s Takeaway
I think this is the most practical version of tokenization we have heard in a while. Franklin Templeton is not chasing a flashy use case, it is taking a huge existing market and making it work 24/7. SWIFT is doing what SWIFT always does, building connective tissue so the system can evolve without breaking. The only thing that will slow this down is not demand, it is the boring stuff: rules, audits, controls, and key management. If regulators and institutions can agree on standards, onchain banking stops being a crypto talking point and starts looking like the next upgrade to global finance.
