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Franklin Templeton and Binance said they have launched an institutional “off-exchange collateral program” that allows eligible clients to post tokenized money market fund shares issued via Franklin Templeton’s Benji platform as collateral while trading on Binance, with the assets held off the exchange. The companies described the arrangement as keeping the tokenized assets in third-party custody while “mirroring” their collateral value inside Binance’s trading environment.
Binance’s announcement framed the launch as the first offering under a strategic collaboration between the firms that it said began in September 2025, positioning the program as part of its institutional off-exchange settlement and collateral workflow. The release also stated that custody and settlement infrastructure supporting the program is provided by Ceffu, Binance’s institutional custody partner, and named Ceffu Custody FZE as the custody services provider in Dubai.
The collateral referenced in the announcement is tied to Franklin Templeton’s Benji tokenization stack, which describes a 1:1 mapping between shares of the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX) and BENJI tokens. In SEC filings for the fund, Franklin Templeton describes a transfer-agent-controlled, blockchain-integrated recordkeeping system for share ownership and notes that the fund does not invest in native crypto assets of public permissionless blockchains.
From a regulatory and operational standpoint, the parties emphasized that the tokenized collateral remains in a “regulated custody environment,” and the custody entity cited in the release, Ceffu Custody FZE, states it is licensed and supervised in Dubai as a Virtual Asset Service Provider for custody services by the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA). Binance’s own “getting started” instructions indicate access is limited to eligible institutional users and routed through institutional onboarding and account management, rather than being generally available to retail accounts.
The development primarily affects institutional trading desks and asset managers seeking to use tokenized cash-like instruments as collateral without transferring those assets onto an exchange, as described by the parties’ off-exchange custody-and-mirroring structure. For issuers and infrastructure providers, the practical change is the addition of a new, exchange-integrated use case for tokenized fund shares—subject to eligibility and regional availability conditions set out in Binance’s notice.
