Author

Dan Brightmore

Published

24 September 2025

Estimated Read time

3Mins

Integration connects Franklin Templeton’s proprietary tokenisation platform to BNB Chain’s growing ecosystem of institutional and retail investors, supporting secure, compliant on-chain financial products

BNB Chain, leading L1 ecosystem, and Franklin Templeton, a global investment leader with $1.6 trillion in assets under management, today announced the expansion of Franklin Templeton’s Benji Technology Platform onto the BNB Chain. This integration allows Franklin Templeton to leverage BNB Chain’s scalable, low-cost, compliance-ready, and enterprise-grade infrastructure to provide global clients with seamless access to tokenized investment products.

Benji Blockchain Technology Platform

The Benji Technology Platform is Franklin Templeton’s proprietary blockchain-integrated stack, designed to facilitate trading, management, and administration of token-based investments. Using this platform, Franklin Templeton launched the world’s first U.S.-registered mutual fund in 2021 using blockchain-integrated technology to process transactions and record share ownership. The firm has since launched several tokenized investment products, fully on-chain, that support a wide range of global client needs across retail, wealth, institutional, bank and collateral use cases.

By deploying on BNB Chain, Franklin Templeton gains access to a growing ecosystem of institutional and retail participants while demonstrating the network’s ability to support real-world, on-chain financial products at scale. 

“Our goal is to meet more investors where they’re active, while continuing to push the boundaries of what tokenization can deliver with security and compliance at the forefront. Together, Franklin Templeton and BNB Chain will work to deliver tokenized assets with greater utility, and enhanced features for retail and institutional clients across the globe.”

Roger Bayston, Head of Digital Assets, Franklin Templeton

BNB Chain has become a premier destination for tokenized financial products, including money market funds, public equities, credit instruments, and other real-world assets. It enables tokenisation at scale through its powerful tech stack designed for secure, low-cost execution with real-time finality.

“BNB Chain has a purpose-built environment that issuers can’t find elsewhere: fast settlement, low fees, and compliant data tooling in one ecosystem. Franklin Templeton’s decision to expand the Benji Technology Platform to our network demonstrates that BNB Chain can support regulated, real-world assets at scale and continues to strengthen our ecosystem of tokenised financial products.”

Sarah Song, Head of Business Development at BNB Chain

About BNB Chain

BNB Chain is a community-driven blockchain ecosystem that is removing barriers to Web3 adoption. It is composed of:

  • BNB Smart Chain (BSC): A secure DeFi hub with the lowest gas fees of any EVM-compatible L1; serves as the ecosystem’s governance chain.  
  • opBNB: A scalability L2 that delivers some of the lowest gas fees of any L2 and rapid processing speeds.
  • BNB Greenfield: Meets decentralized storage needs for the ecosystem and lets users establish their own data marketplaces.

Setting a high bar for security, the AvengerDAO community protects BNB Chain users while Red Alarm provides a real-time risk-scanner for Dapps. The ecosystem also offers a range of monetary and ecosystem rewards as part of its Builder Support Program. For more, follow BNB Chain on X or start exploring via our Dapp library.

About Franklin Templeton

Franklin Resources, Inc. is a global investment management organisation with subsidiaries operating as Franklin Templeton and serving clients in over 150 countries. Franklin Templeton’s mission is to help clients achieve better outcomes through investment management expertise, wealth management and technology solutions. Through its specialist investment managers, the company offers specialization on a global scale, bringing extensive capabilities in fixed income, equity, alternatives and multi-asset solutions. With more than 1,500 investment professionals, and offices in major financial markets around the world, the California-based company has over 75 years of investment experience and [$1.64 trillion] in assets under management as of August 31, 2025. For more information, please visit franklintempleton.com 

  • Blockchain & Crypto

Author

Mark Andreev

Published

6 June 2025

Estimated Read time

4Mins

Mark Andreev, COO at Exactly, presents a practical guide to tackling e-commerce fraud with payment tokenisation

Tokenisation can solve a big problem… e-commerce fraud is a growing threat that continues to impact online businesses worldwide. According to recent figures from Statista (2025), global e-commerce losses due to online payment fraud are projected to exceed $100 billion by 2029. As fraudsters increasingly exploit IT vulnerabilities, it is imperative for online and brick-and-mortar businesses to fortify their cybersecurity posture.

Amidst the current security challenges, payment tokenisation emerges as a technology to future-proof business operations and is projected to reach USD 28.97 billion worth by 2033.

This guide explores the concept of payment tokenisation, emphasising its value and role in ensuring credit card payment processing standards for merchants.

What is Payment Tokenisation?

Tokenisation is the process of substituting sensitive data with non-sensitive values – tokens. It works as a key layer of protection for stored data by replacing card numbers with illegible, surrogate values.

During a transaction, payment details are securely transmitted to a trusted payment provider via hosted payment page or through direct API integration.

In the hosted payment page flow, the customer is redirected to a secure payment page operated by the payment provider. Here they can enter their payment information. The provider handles data collection, encryption, and transaction authorisation, keeping sensitive information off the merchant’s servers.

In the API integration flow, the merchant’s website collects payment details using secure client-side tools. In this case, the merchant is responsible for ensuring full PCI DSS compliance, as sensitive data passes through their systems.

Following a transaction, sensitive card data is substituted by a special character sequence. The translation of characters into randomised values refers to the tokenisation process.

For merchants who are not PCI DSS compliant, storing sensitive information on their side is not allowed. In these cases, the third-party payment provider retains the sensitive data and the tokens for future use, while merchants don’t retain any sensitive information.

This method is one of the key cybersecurity best practices to ensure payment providers remain compliant with PCI DSS and is also crucial for merchants using API integration to store sensitive data.

Different Types of Tokens

There are different types of tokens available to merchants, offering different levels of complexity and security. Simple tokens refer to randomised reference numbers that are unidentifiable and unrelated to customer data. They provide a high level of security when implemented correctly by a reputable payment provider.

On the other hand, token vaults represent a more complex system of payment security and data handling. Essentially, token vaults are encrypted repositories of original payment data associated with tokens from each customer transaction. Depending on the type of payment gateway integration, either the merchant or the payment provider may retrieve the payment information as needed. Token vaults can also be deployed in cloud environments, mitigating the need for extensive infrastructure.

The Value of Tokens

In an era where cybersecurity is paramount, failing to secure customer data can come at significant costs. Recently, the IT systems of the UK’s most prominent retailers suffered significant downtime following a series of cyberattacks. They were prevented from serving their customers as a result. As the consequences of these attacks continue to linger, affected UK retailers are working overtime to get back on track. In these situations, the use of tokenisation payment security has partly helped prevent what could have been a catastrophic breach. Reducing the risk of a lateral exploitation of customer data. In fact, using payment tokens, retailers avoid the need to encrypt and retain sensitive payment details. This lowers the risk of attacks, breaches, and noncompliance with ever-changing payment processing and data security policies.

Tokenisation also enables seamless customer experiences, addressing a crucial customer demand – convenience. In fact, with tokenisation enabling one-click checkouts, customers avoid re-entering card details and access a seamless shopping experience, meeting an important need for comfort and familiarity for consumers.

Finally, from a regulatory perspective, compliance with PCI DSS is mandatory for payment providers and merchants specifically using API integration within payment gateways to store sensitive information. In this regulatory context, tokenisation becomes a straightforward strategy to meet fundamental data handling legal requirements. In an era of rising cyber threats and increasing customer expectations, tokenisation offers merchants a scalable, effective, and future-ready approach to safeguarding sensitive data, building trust, and preserving business integrity.

  • Cybersecurity in FinTech
  • Digital Payments

Author

Gunnar Már Gunnarsson

Published

9 October 2024

Estimated Read time

4Mins

Gunnar Már Gunnarsson, Co-founder & CTO of PAYSTRAX on the potential for tokenisation to improve digital payments

The forward to the Bank of England’s most recent report on innovation in payments begins with the words:

“The concept at the heart of money is trust – a trust which is hard won but easily lost.”

In today’s financial climate, where digital transactions have become the norm, trust and security are more crucial than ever. However, 84% of consumers don’t completely trust online payments, and many drop out before they complete a purchase online due to safety concerns and a lack of payment options.

Tokenisation presents a way forward, offering an increased level of trust and efficiency that could tackle the concerns of consumers. And offer business increased security in the payments process. By replacing sensitive payment card information with unique identifiers (tokens), this technology provides a safe way to handle payment data from seller to consumer.

As the future of payments continues to evolve, safety, simplicity and global alignment will be essential. Tokenisation stands at the forefront of this with the potential to not only reduce fraud but also improve the customer experience.

An extra safeguard against cybercrime with tokenisation

The issue many businesses and customers face is that their data remains exposed during transactions. This increases the risk of fraud and company liability issues in the event of data breaches. Tokenisation technology replaces sensitive data with a unique, randomly generated string of symbols that cannot be easily interpreted. This provides an extra safeguard against cybercrime. This added level of security benefits both consumers and businesses. It can reduce vulnerabilities in everything from online purchases to mobile payments.

For merchants, this is particularly beneficial. By keeping sensitive information, such as customers’ card details, outside their own systems, they minimise the risk of security breaches. Tokenisation also helps businesses meet compliance standards, such as PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard). With no need to store or transmit sensitive data, companies can lower their security management responsibilities and reduce the overall costs of compliance. Tokenisation facilitates this easier compliance by deferring regulatory requirements across regions. Businesses can then rely on tokenised data instead of managing the security of the original PAN (Primary Account Number).

Enhancing the payment experience with tokenisation

Friction during transactions has long been an issue in finance, costing the industry $2 billion dollars a year in lost payments. Consumers increasingly expect faster and more seamless payments in all aspects of their life, from in store shopping to online purchases.

With tokenisation technology, the payment process becomes faster. Sensitive information no longer needs to be re-entered or verified externally during each transaction. This reduction in data exposure reduces the risk of fraud while maintaining the rapid pace of real-time payments. Overall this creates a secure and safe payment process for businesses while not interrupting the real-time user experience.

Frictionless payments aren’t the only benefit of tokenisation. With customers being more likely to complete purchases when a tokenisation system is in play, with Visa reporting that authorisation rates improve by 2.1% using the technology. This is mostly due to the dynamic card-on-file information that tokenisation provides. It reduces payment failures and ensures a smoother purchase process, with failed payments no longer an issue.

A final example for how tokenisation enhances payment experience both user and provider side can be found in B2B Cross-Border payments. The market is projected to grow significantly, with estimates indicating a 43% increase to reach $56.1 trillion by 2030. The risk of fraud grows with this, alongside increasingly in depth and complex international laws and national regulations, companies need both security, and to be customer facing in their plans. Technologies that secure payments and provide seamless transactions, like tokenisation, are pivotal in supporting this growth by reducing risks and improving efficiency.

The future of payments

As alternative payment methods and RTP networks continue to rise, tokenisation will be crucial in creating a global payments ecosystem that is both secure and frictionless. Visa has issued over 9.5 billion tokens globally, with Mastercard reporting over 50% year-over-year growth in tokenised transactions. This rapid adoption highlights the importance of tokenisation in building secure, efficient payment networks.

By reducing fraud, simplifying security management, and improving the overall customer experience, tokenisation is set to play a leading role in shaping the future of payments. Especially as digital and cross-border transactions become increasingly important.

It’s more than just a security measure. It’s a critical technology that enhances the entire payment ecosystem, making transactions faster, safer, and more efficient for all parties involved.

Gunnar Már Gunnarsson, Co-founder & CTO of PAYSTRAX

  • Cybersecurity in FinTech
  • Digital Payments