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BNP Paribas is taking its money market fund tokenization work a step further — this time on a public blockchain. In a new press release, the group said BNP Paribas Asset Management issued a tokenized share class of an existing French-domiciled money market fund on the public Ethereum network, using its internal AssetFoundry platform and a permissioned setup that restricts who can hold and transfer the tokens.
Public chain, but with a permissioned wrapper
The key detail here is the structure: BNP Paribas is using public Ethereum, but not in an open, permissionless way for end users.
The bank said the tokenized shares were issued under a permissioned access model, meaning only eligible and authorized participants can hold or transfer them. That gives BNP Paribas a way to test public-chain infrastructure while keeping the fund inside a regulated and controlled framework.
A second MMF tokenization project, with a different setup
BNP Paribas also makes clear this is not its first attempt.
The group says this follows an earlier tokenized money market fund issuance in Luxembourg that used a private blockchain. This new French MMF project is positioned as a second experiment with a different technology and operating model, as the bank explores multiple tokenization and distribution paths for funds.
That’s an important signal: BNP isn’t betting on one blockchain setup yet. It’s testing both private and public-chain models to see how they behave in real fund operations.
What each BNP unit did in the pilot
The project was run as a one-off, limited intra-group experiment, but it covered the full process stack.
According to BNP Paribas, BNP Paribas Asset Management acted as the fund issuer, BNP Paribas Securities Services acted as transfer agent and fund dealing services provider, and BNP Paribas CIB’s AssetFoundry platform handled tokenization and public-blockchain connectivity. Securities Services also operated the wallet setup and held the private key within the scope of the pilot.
In plain English: this wasn’t just a token minting demo. BNP is testing how tokenized fund shares can fit into real back-office and transfer-agency workflows.
Why money market funds are the test case
BNP Paribas is framing money market funds as a practical place to test tokenization because they’re already widely used for liquidity management by corporate and institutional investors.
The bank says tokenization could eventually offer an alternative to traditional batch-based fund processing, with more frequent and flexible processing of fund operations while keeping the funds within regulated structures.
That’s the broader institutional tokenization pitch right now: not “replace finance,” but modernize the parts that are still slow and operationally heavy.
Why it matters for crypto
- This is another sign that large banks are testing public blockchain infrastructure, not just private ledgers, for regulated financial products.
- BNP Paribas is using a permissioned model on Ethereum, which reflects where institutional tokenization is heading: public-chain rails with compliance gating.
- The pilot covers real fund functions (issuer, transfer agent, wallet/key management), making it more meaningful than a simple proof-of-concept token issuance.
- Money market funds are a major institutional cash-management product, so tokenization here could matter more operationally than many headline-grabbing RWA experiments.
What to watch next
- Whether BNP Paribas expands beyond a one-off intra-group pilot into live client-facing tokenized MMF workflows.
- How BNP compares outcomes from its Luxembourg private-chain project versus this French public-Ethereum setup.
- Whether the group discloses more detail on settlement timing, processing frequency, or operational efficiencies from the pilot.
- If other large European banks follow with similar permissioned-on-public-chain fund structures. (This is an inference based on the institutional tokenization trend.)
Source: BNP Paribas press release