WisdomTree, Inc. (NYSE: WT), a global financial services firm, announced it has appointed The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (BNY) (NYSE: BK), a financial services provider, as its core banking-as-a-service infrastructure provider for WisdomTree Prime, the firm’s retail platform for tokenized assets and cryptocurrency. The collab between the companies solidifies WisdomTree as BNY’s retail digital assets BaaS client.
WisdomTree Prime is an app providing access to tokenized funds to U.S. retail investors with stablecoin on and offramps through WisdomTree’s stablecoin conversion service.
For the industry, the latest relationship facilitates an expansion in services for users wanting access to tokenized real-world assets (RWA). Users are now able to leverage the WisdomTree Prime platform in order to make investments in tokenized RWA and will gain the ability to “support onchain transfers across tokenized funds and select stablecoins, including USDC and PYUSD, as these capabilities are introduced.”
This expansion of the WisdomTree Prime platform introduces various capabilities that allow crypto native users “to remain onchain and seamlessly access WisdomTree’s diversified range of tokenized RWA, including digital funds and onchain gold.”
Via the collab with BNY, users gain access to BNY’s banking functionality, in addition to blockchain channels, allowing for on and offramp capabilities between the traditional banking sector and the app.
WisdomTree and BNY have an existing relationship, with BNY serving as administrator, custodian, and sub-adviser on certain WisdomTree funds, as well as the “reserve custodian and banking partner for its USDW stablecoin.”
BNY also continues to provide its expertise in investment management and custody across WisdomTree’s products for tokenized RWA. The relationship also enables institutional users on WisdomTree Connect “to harness the capabilities of existing payment rails to power their investing, reserve management and treasury operations.”
As reported recently, BNY announced that it was appointed by Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), in order to offer alternative investment data, supporting GPIF’s goal to enhance its alternative investment performance. GPIF is one of the world’s pension funds with “over $1.6 Trillion in assets under management.”
BNY’s Data & Analytics platform was chosen to offer GPIF granular data of alternative assets, enabling more well-informed investment decisions based “on a clear view of the performance and risk of the asset class.”
The platform accesses the dataset of CEPRES, a private market data firm with many years of experience as well as the “largest” private assets database internationally.
GPIF’s 5-year medium-term plan emphasizes achieving “excess returns through alternative investments, making scarce, high-quality data for quantitative analysis essential.”
By obtaining investment look-through data from General Partners, combined with data validation capabilities, BNY will offer “support for GPIF to achieve its objective.”