Cross River Bank announced on Nov. 3, 2026, that it has partnered with Offchain to integrate tokenization directly into its lending platform using Arbitrum One as the settlement network. The initiative aims to allow loans to be funded, held and transferred onchain from the point of origination, with a production deployment targeted for early 2027.
The announcement was made by founder and CEO Gilles Gade at Hong Kong Fintech Week. Under the plan, Offchain's Enterprise Services team will build a proprietary tokenization engine for the bank, while ZeroDev will provide embedded wallets that operate behind Cross River's existing borrower-facing applications. Cross River will remain the regulated lender of record and retain its underwriting, risk management and compliance standards.
The companies said they have completed a proof of concept demonstrating loan tokenization and are now moving toward production deployment. The infrastructure is expected to support programmable lending, easier loan transfers, and new financing opportunities for credit investors, including onchain funds and international capital. Cross River's existing systems, such as Arix and MPLLifeCycle, currently handle origination and compliance checks. The tokenization layer is intended to add a shared onchain record for ownership, funding, payment and servicing activity throughout a loan's life.
The news follows Cross River's earlier Oct. 15 agreement to connect Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin with its payments infrastructure. It also comes as tokenized credit continues to expand, with Morpho's RWA market recording $2.145 billion in deposits and $894.18 million in outstanding loans as of late October.
