Morgan Stanley Pushes Trajectory Cross Tokenized Equities Launch to Q1 2027
Oct. 13, 2026 • Article • Digital Assets
Morgan Stanley has moved its target for introducing tokenized equities on its Trajectory Cross alternative trading system from the second half of 2026 to the first quarter of 2027. Amy Oldenburg, the bank’s head of digital asset strategy, cited limited issuance of tokenized shares by third parties and nascent client demand. The securities would trade alongside traditional equities, exchange-traded funds and American Depositary Receipts on the existing venue, rather than on a separate crypto exchange.
The bank is developing client-facing custodial wallet infrastructure and testing how conventional and tokenized instruments can be handled together. A planned tokenization service from the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation and forthcoming US stablecoin regulations provide context for the revised timetable, but neither guarantees securities for the venue to trade. Tokenized equities represented about $3.15 billion of the roughly $39 billion on-chain real-world asset market in October 2026, illustrating why growth in tokenization does not necessarily mean more equities are available to trade.
Morgan Stanley has pushed its target for introducing tokenized equities on its Trajectory Cross alternative trading system to the first quarter of 2027, citing a shortage of products to trade and nascent client demand. The plan would place the securities alongside conventional instruments on an existing trading venue, rather than on a standalone cryptocurrency exchange.
Amy Oldenburg, Morgan Stanley’s head of digital asset strategy, disclosed the revised window during an interview at TOKEN2049 in Singapore on October 12, 2026. She had previously outlined a launch in the second half of 2026 at the Digital Asset Summit in March. The change shows that building a venue is only part of the task: tokenized shares must also be issued before the system can match orders in them.
An Existing Venue for a New Instrument
Morgan Stanley intends to integrate tokenized equities into Trajectory Cross, also known as ATS-1. The alternative trading system already handles traditional equities, exchange-traded funds and American Depositary Receipts. An alternative trading system is a venue for matching trades outside a conventional stock exchange; it does not create the securities traded there.
That distinction matters to the revised timetable. Morgan Stanley needs third-party market participants to issue tokenized equity securities before Trajectory Cross can provide crossing and execution liquidity. Oldenburg identified the limited supply of those products, together with early-stage client demand, as the primary reasons for postponing the rollout. The Q1 2027 date remains a target, not evidence that sufficient products will be available by then.
Trajectory Cross matches conditional algorithmic orders at a volume-weighted average price, or VWAP, over configured time intervals. VWAP reflects prices weighted by the amount traded. The matching design is intended to mitigate market impact and adverse selection—the risk of trading at an unfavorable price when other participants have better information. Under Morgan Stanley’s plan, tokenized equities would enter that established trading framework rather than require a separate crypto-focused venue.
Custody and Settlement Work
Morgan Stanley is also developing proprietary, client-facing custodial wallet infrastructure and testing how traditional and tokenized instruments can be handled together in its Digital Asset Lab. Those efforts address a different part of the workflow from matching trades: clients and the bank need a way to hold and manage the instruments the venue is intended to trade.
Outside the bank, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation is slated to launch a tokenization service at the end of October 2026. Its settlement rails are anticipated to help facilitate Wall Street trading in tokenized equities. Federal regulations under the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins, or GENIUS, Act are scheduled to take effect in January 2027, ahead of Morgan Stanley’s revised target.
Those scheduled developments provide context for the bank’s timing, but they do not remove the constraint Oldenburg identified. Settlement infrastructure and digital-asset rules cannot, on their own, supply tokenized shares for an alternative trading system to match.
Equity Supply Lags the Broader Tokenization Market
The on-chain real-world asset market was valued at roughly $39 billion in October 2026. Tokenized equities accounted for approximately $3.15 billion, while tokenized U.S. Treasuries represented about $14.6 billion—more than a third of the total. The comparison illustrates why a growing overall market does not necessarily translate into a deep pool of tokenized equity products.
Longer-term estimates also differ within Morgan Stanley. Oldenburg has publicly forecast a tokenized real-world asset market of between $3 trillion and $10 trillion by 2030. A September 2026 Morgan Stanley Research report set a lower base-case forecast of $2.3 trillion for the same year. Both projections concern the broader real-world asset market, not a guaranteed volume of equities available on Trajectory Cross.
For the planned rollout, the nearer-term measures are more concrete: third-party issuance, client demand and the bank’s progress on custody and trading integration. Morgan Stanley has set a new window for bringing tokenized equities onto its existing system, but the availability of securities to trade remains outside the venue’s control.
Ramp partnered with Stripe and Bridge in July 2026 to deploy stablecoin rails for business bill payments and yield-bearing stablecoin accounts funded through standard fiat bank accounts. The arrangement shows how stablecoins can be incorporated into familiar payment workflows without requiring businesses to fund every transaction with digital assets. The economics depend on more than the cost of moving a token on-chain. Stripe charges merchants 1.5% for stablecoin checkout transactions, versus its standard card-processing fee of 2.9% plus $0.30; neither figure establishes the price of Ramp’s bill-payment service. Businesses receiving fiat may also face foreign-exchange and off-ramp costs, typically 0.3% to 2.0% when converting into local banking systems. Domestic clearing networks and compliance checks remain part of end-to-end delivery. Bridge’s issuance and transfer tools, alongside its conditional U.S. trust-bank approval, illustrate the infrastructure behind those payments—but not the elimination of every payment cost.
StraitsX has opened onboarding for digital payment token providers across more than 100 markets through an expanded card-issuing architecture developed with Visa. Integration documentation published on 26 October 2026 describes a multi-BIN model that combines issuing sponsorship, transaction authorization, compliance screening and fiat clearing. The approach lets participating providers build stablecoin-backed card products while merchants continue to receive conventional fiat payments through Visa’s network. StraitsX says its card gross transaction value rose 40-fold year on year from Q4 2024 to Q4 2025, while cards issued across Asia increased 83-fold. On-chain issuer telemetry recorded monthly card transaction volume of $310 million to $438 million through October 2026. The company’s stated $6 billion annualized card transaction figure is distinct from its cumulative $70 billion in processed stablecoin volume. StraitsX and Visa have also scheduled demonstrations of agentic payments for November 2026.
ACI Worldwide and Circle announced a pilot on October 27, 2026, involving USDC and connectivity to Colombia’s Bre-B instant payments system. The integration runs through ACI Connetic, a payments orchestration platform, rather than embedding USDC in Bre-B’s central infrastructure. There is no indication that Colombia’s central bank has adopted USDC as a settlement asset for the national network. The distinction matters because ACI also supplies technology for Bre-B’s central directory and real-time clearing engine. Bre-B launched in October 2025 and handled more than 500 million transactions within five months. Connetic is designed to bring traditional payment rails and digital asset networks together without requiring banks to replace legacy core ledgers. ACI says the platform can support other digital assets and liquidity providers, so the pilot does not make USDC its exclusive option. The arrangement tests a vendor-level connection alongside an established public payment system, not a change to that system’s settlement rules.
Ripple received final approval on 26 October 2026 for Ripple National Trust Bank, giving it a federally chartered institution for fiduciary and custody activities. The charter does not authorize commercial deposits or loans, and it does not transfer issuance of Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin to the new bank. RLUSD issuance remains with Standard Custody & Trust Company under New York State Department of Financial Services supervision. BNY is the primary custodian of the dollar deposits and U.S. Treasury reserves backing the stablecoin. The arrangement separates a federal custody role from state-supervised issuance. It also comes as the OCC implements the GENIUS Act’s stablecoin rules and faces a lawsuit from the Independent Community Bankers of America challenging its authority to grant national trust charters to crypto firms. Ripple has separately announced an expanded partnership with BNY and Robinhood focused on institutional custody capabilities and exploring tokenized trade finance.
Stripe confirmed in October 2026 that it plans to expand its Bridge- and Visa-powered stablecoin card issuing program from 18 initial countries to more than 100 by the end of the year. The planned rollout spans Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. It follows Stripe’s February 2025 acquisition of Bridge, whose APIs connect stablecoin transfers with fiat accounts and bank payouts. Stripe has also made Open USD available to businesses in Stripe Financial Accounts alongside USDC. Its broader stablecoin infrastructure combines Bridge’s conversion tools with Stripe’s existing payment and treasury network and embedded wallets from Privy. Lead Bank supports the card program as a financial institution partner and BIN sponsor. A separate deployment by Ramp uses Bridge APIs and Privy wallets to let businesses pay vendors in stablecoins using funds from fiat bank accounts. Together, the developments show how Stripe is assembling stablecoin services for business payments, while the planned geographic expansion remains unfinished.
Project Agorá settled approximately CHF 800,000 in live, multi-currency transactions during a July 2026 testing phase. The work examined a cross-border payment model that places tokenised commercial bank deposits on a shared ledger while holding tokenised central bank reserves on jurisdictional ledgers. Five central banks participated directly in live-reserve settlement, although the project’s wider central-bank group has since expanded to eight with the Bank of Canada’s entry. The project reports an average settlement time of 80 seconds across six currencies and uses smart contracts to run anti-money laundering, sanctions and fraud checks simultaneously. Legal analyses found that tokenisation did not change the underlying character of deposits or reserves in participating jurisdictions. The findings support further work on deposit-based wholesale settlement, but the supplied research does not establish that the approach outperforms stablecoins. The Eurosystem plans to draw on Agorá’s architecture for Projects Pontes and Appia.