Singapore’s push to take tokenisation mainstream is bearing fruit, with several institutions launching tokenised money market funds recently.
Last month, Franklin Templeton introduced the first tokenised money market retail fund in the city state, in collaboration with local lender DBS Bank.
The Franklin Onchain US Dollar Short-Term Money Market Fund, which is currently available to DBS’s clients and accredited investors, is expected to be open to retail investors in the first quarter of 2026.
Also last month, Singapore’s Phillip Capital launched the tokenised Phillip USD Money Market Fund, a blockchain-based version of its existing Phillip USD Money Market Fund.
Meanwhile, Maybank Asset Management Singapore, a unit of Malaysian banking group Maybank, and BNP Paribas’s securities services business are teaming up with Marketnode, a Singapore-based digital market infrastructure firm, to launch a Maybank money market fund on-chain. It’s not clear when the fund will be available to investors.
Tokenisation hub
The moves highlight the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) drive to develop the city state into a global hub for regulated tokenisation, with financial institutions spearheading blockchain-based solutions to unlock liquidity, automate settlement, and improve accessibility and transparency of traditional investment funds.
Tokenisation converts ownership interest in a money market fund into digital tokens recorded on a blockchain. It allows high-value assets to be split up into smaller, more affordable digital pieces, democratising access for retail investors.
In a speech at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2025 on November 13, Chia Der Jiun, managing director of MAS, described tokenisation and artificial intelligence as two “transformative themes” in the next ten years.
He said tokenised assets have come “out of the lab”, citing bonds issued natively and settled on chain, tokenised money market funds, and banks offering tokenised cash management services to corporate treasuries.
“So tokenisation has lifted off the ground,” he said.
Early stages still
Chetan Karkhanis, senior vice president of digital asset partnership development at Franklin Templeton, points out that interest in developing tokenised money market funds is still in the early stages in Singapore.
“While many are interested in how blockchain and tokenisation works, the projects remain at a stage of testing and intrigue as opposed to full scale adoption and deployment among the traditional players,” he says in an email reply to questions from Asia Asset Management.
According to Karkhanis, challenges to grow the market include education and raising awareness, as well as disrupting existing systems while leveraging the advantages of blockchain technology.
In his speech, Chia said “significant progress” is required in order to reach a stage where most assets can be tokenised, and listed three critical developments for this to happen.
First, he said, asset-backed tokens have to be standardised and networks have to be interoperable. Then there has to be a deep pool of safe and reliable settlement assets. And finally, institutional-grade networks are needed.
