A New Funding Channel for Working Capital

Executive Summary

Tokenization is described as a new way to distribute financial products, but it is often criticized for having few tangible economic uses beyond speculation. We answer that criticism by examining four cases in which stablecoin capital is funding the working capital of operating businesses. Among them is Figure, one of the largest non-bank home equity lenders in the U.S., which now funds part of its loan warehouse from onchain investors. This report explains how that funding works, where it is already in use, and what earlier financing innovations suggest about how far it can scale.

• Working capital needs create recurring demand for financing. Businesses fund loans, payments and purchases before receiving the proceeds that repay them. External financing lets these activities grow beyond the limits of the business’s own cash, with different benefits and constraints.
• Tokenization gives access to a new source of working capital. Investors subscribe to tokenized financing products with stablecoins, supplying capital to strategies that fund loans and receivables. Where the tokens are accepted as lending collateral, investors can borrow against them to purchase additional tokens, adding demand when asset yields exceed borrowing costs.
• Tokenized investment pools are already funding recurring business needs. PRIME funds Figure’s home equity warehouse ($534 million), PST funds payment settlements through Arf ($376 million), nOPAL buys Brazilian merchants’ card receivables ($112 million) and oTFY funds commodities in transit ($30 million). Lending markets held 35% to 71% of three of the four, demonstrating the borrower demand at work.
• Historical precedents show new funding channels grow when products meet investors’ needs. Asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) gave money market funds short-term exposure to business assets, while master trusts gave institutional investors longer-term exposure to revolving receivables. Tokenized credit applies the same principle, offering stablecoin investors yield from business assets and, where accepted as collateral, the ability to borrow against it.

Historical examples demonstrate how connecting businesses with new investors can lower financing costs and expand the credit available to the wider economy. Tokenized products that meet onchain investors’ requirements for leveraged carry could follow the same path, giving businesses more capital to finance loans, payments and trade.

Working Capital 101

Every business needs to spend cash before collecting payments. A merchant pays for the goods and the cost of delivery before receiving the customer’s payment. A loan originator funds a new loan and holds it until it is sold or securitized. In the interval, cash is tied up in inventory, receivables or loans as working capital or warehouse funding.

A business can fund this gap from its own cash, but that will cap growth at the cash on hand. The alternative is external financing. There are four main sources, and each trades off price, speed and scale:

• Receivables and loan sales. The business sells the claims to a buyer for cash today, through factoring, whole-loan sales or ongoing purchases under a forward-flow agreement. It does not require a banking relationship, but is the most expensive form of financing, and the buyer dictates what can be sold and at what discount.
• Bank facilities. The business sets up a revolving line secured on eligible assets. It is the cheapest debt available to a business with a banking relationship, but can take months of underwriting and credit approval, and may not be available to certain businesses.
• Specialized funds. The business receives funding from trade finance, receivables and private credit funds. They are more flexible and can move faster, but generally cost more.
• Securitization. The business pools loans or receivables in a special-purpose vehicle that issues securities backed by their cash flows. It reaches the broadest investor base at the best price, but the upfront structuring costs make it economical only for large volumes.

Short-dated claims are self-liquidating, meaning customer payments will repay the facility as they come in. For longer-dated loans, the financing is a bridge, repaid when the loans are sold or securitized. The financing revolves through a four-stage cycle (Exhibit 1)

Stablecoin Funding

A growing number of businesses that carry loans and receivables are exploring blockchains as a means to reach capital that already sits onchain. The business can set up a special-purpose vehicle to hold the loans and receivables themselves, or a secured facility against those assets. It can then work with a tokenization platform to issue tokens on a blockchain that represent an interest in the vehicle. Investors can subscribe with stablecoins, which the vehicle then converts to fiat currency. The proceeds advanced to the business can be used to repay an existing facility or fund additional working capital.

Sources of stablecoin demand

That leaves the question of why stablecoin holders want these assets. Our previous report described an active market for financing yield-bearing tokens that works much like repo. On one side are traders, who post a yield-bearing token as collateral in a lending market, borrow stablecoins against it, buy more of the token, and repeat until the position reaches the desired leverage. The trader earns the carry, the token’s yield less the borrowing rate, multiplied by the leverage. On the other side are stablecoin lenders, whose deposits are often allocated by curators to different lending markets.

Historically, this trade has been conducted through crypto-native assets whose yields rise and fall with crypto markets. Tokenization widened the field by bringing traditional financial assets onchain, and these have gained ground because their yields do not depend on crypto conditions. Short-term asset-backed credit, the loans and receivables that we previously explored, has been among the fastest to gain acceptance because its yield is contractual and its assets are self-liquidating.

What changes for the business

This onchain capital can provide an alternative funding source for the working capital cycle.

If this channel continues to scale, it could benefit businesses on three fronts:

• Access. A business can diversify funding sources beyond its existing banks and credit funds. Onchain access currently depends on a relatively small group of lending markets and curators whose allocation limits may constrain capacity, which should ease as the market grows.
• Capacity. An established vehicle can accept subscriptions continuously through stablecoins and smart contracts. This allows capital to scale as financing needs grow. Faster settlement and automated processing also reduce the operational burden of financing assets that turn over frequently, such as payment receivables.
• Cost. Shared ownership records and automated settlement and distributions can reduce reconciliation and processing costs. If these savings exceed the costs of establishing and operating the tokenized structure, smaller pools may become economical to finance.

Case Studies

Hastra PRIME: warehouse financing for home equity loans

Figure Technology Solutions (Figure) originates home equity lines of credit online through its subsidiary Figure Lending, which has originated more than $25 billion since 2018. Once originated, the loans are sold to investors or packaged into securitizations. The loans run for years, but Figure holds them in warehouse facilities for less than a month before sale. Traditionally, bank facilities have financed 80 to 100% of principal, depending on the collateral.

Figure has built an alternative through its own lending marketplace called Prime (formerly Democratized Prime). Investors lend YLDS, Figure's SEC-registered yield-bearing stablecoin, into a pool, and Figure Lending borrows from it against loans pledged as collateral. The pools price continuously on utilization, so a shortfall of lenders raises the rate until Figure Lending de-levers or new lenders arrive. Investors are lending to Figure Lending, not directly to individual homeowners. When the loans are sold, the proceeds repay the financing and release capital for new loans.

Hastra's PRIME connects onchain investors to that market. An investor deposits stablecoins with Hastra, which moves the funds into Prime, and receives PRIME, a token representing its participation in the pool and accruing the pool's yield. PRIME's return is the Prime rate, plus YLDS interest on funds not yet deployed, less Hastra's 50 basis points, representing a 30-day net APY of 6.1%. PRIME is also accepted as collateral on Morpho and Kamino, where holders can borrow stablecoins against it for leveraged carry.

As of November 4, 2026, PRIME had reached $534 million in AUM. Morpho held $245 million, and Kamino $84 million, together representing 61.5% of AUM, demonstrating that the leveraged carry trade has been critical to its growth.

Huma PST: settlement financing for cross-border payments

Cross-border payment providers promise customers a fast transfer while the corresponding funds are still moving through the banking system. Traditionally, these providers have held prefunded accounts with payout partners in every corridor they serve, tying up working capital that grows with their coverage and volume. Short-term financing lets them fund each settlement as it arises, and the advances are repaid from the settlement proceeds.

Arf, Huma's Swiss-regulated financing business, sources USDC for licensed payment institutions through onchain lending infrastructure. After assessing a provider, Arf sends USDC to the provider's payout partner when a payment order arrives, and the partner pays the recipient from its local-currency treasury. The provider repays Arf, with fees, within one to seven days as the corresponding funds settle. Arf lends to a book of about sixteen institutions and is the dominant borrower of the Huma pool.

Huma's PST connects onchain investors to that financing activity. An investor deposits USDC into Huma's pool and receives PST, a token representing its share of the pool rather than any specific advance. PST's return comes from the fees paid by the payment providers using the financing, and represents a 30-day net APY of 7.7%. PST is also accepted as collateral on Morpho and Fluid on Ethereum and on Kamino and Jupiter Lend on Solana, where holders can borrow stablecoins against it for leveraged carry.

As of November 4, 2026, PST had reached $376 million in AUM, up from $71 million a year earlier. The four lending venues collectively hold 70.5% of AUM, demonstrating the importance of the leveraged carry trade in PST’s growth.

Nest nOPAL: receivables financing for merchant card installments

Brazilian merchants selling on card installments often wait months for the full proceeds. Traditionally they have sold the receivables to banks and acquirers at a discount, in a market Brazil's central bank supports with a receivables registry.

BlackOpal, through its LiquidStone II strategy, pools investor capital to buy card receivables at a discount through a Brazilian FIDC, a regulated receivables fund. The fund owns the receivables and receives the collections through the card-payment system. The strategy hedges real-dollar exposure for dollar-based investors, and the receivables carry an average maturity of about 45 days.

Nest's nOPAL connects onchain investors to that strategy. An investor deposits stablecoins into a vault, which allocates them to LiquidStone II, and receives nOPAL, a token representing its position in the vault. nOPAL's return reflects the combined portfolio, since the vault holds other tokenized positions such as Bitwise’s Crypto Carry Fund (USCC), and represents a one-year total return of 11.2%. nOPAL is also accepted as collateral on Kamino and Morpho, where holders can borrow USDC against it for leveraged carry.

As of November 4, 2026, nOPAL had reached $112 million in AUM. Kamino and Morpho collectively represented 13.7% of AUM, a smaller share than in the other cases, which leaves more room for leveraged demand to add to its growth.

Obligate oTFY: trade financing for commodities in transit

Commodity traders often lack the cash to pay the supplier, because collection from the buyer comes weeks after loading. Traditionally that gap has been financed by banks for large traders and by specialist funds for the rest.

TradeFlow Capital Management, a Singapore-based manager, finances that gap by entering into fixed-price purchase and onward-sale contracts. TradeFlow's financing vehicles raise part of their capital by issuing digital bonds through Obligate. The bonds are short-dated, matching the trades they fund, and cash recovered from completed trades repays them and funds subsequent purchases.

Obligate's oTFY connects onchain investors to a revolving portfolio of those bonds. An investor subscribes and receives oTFY, issued by a Luxembourg securitization vehicle and representing a claim on the portfolio’s net asset value. oTFY's return comes from the cash flows of the underlying commodity transactions. oTFY is also accepted as collateral on Kamino and Morpho, where holders can borrow USDC against it for leveraged carry.

As of November 4, 2026, oTFY had reached $30 million in AUM. Kamino and Morpho represented 34.9% of AUM, indicating the role the leveraged carry trade has played in the token’s growth.

Historical Precedents

Asset-backed commercial paper

From the 1980s, banks sponsored bankruptcy-remote conduits that bought pools of receivables and loans from businesses and funded them by issuing short-term paper to money market funds. One conduit could aggregate assets from many companies, giving each a route to the money market without an issuance of its own. Outstanding ABCP grew from about $40 billion in 1992 to a peak of $1.2 trillion in July 2007, more than half of all commercial paper.

The paper earned the top short-term rating from the structure, not the sellers: assets sold at a discount, seller-provided loss protection and the sponsor's program-wide enhancement covered credit losses, while a bank liquidity facility repaid maturing paper when new paper could not be sold. That facility covered rollover risk, not credit risk, and it is what this report means by a backstop.

For businesses, the gains were access, capacity and cost. A company that could not issue commercial paper in its own name funded receivables at near money-market rates; capacity scaled with the receivables sold rather than with a bank's lending limit; and the all-in cost sat well below a bank revolver for an unrated company.

For money market funds, ABCP turned assets they could not otherwise hold into short, top-rated, diversified paper yielding a little over Treasury bills. Sponsoring banks earned fees with almost no capital against them, since a liquidity line under one year carried no capital charge, which drove the market's growth.

Credit card and dealer floor-plan master trusts

Securitization reached revolving credit in 1987, and captives applied it to dealers' inventory loans from 1991, when Ford Credit began securitizing floor-plan loans. Card balances and floor-plan advances repay in weeks, far sooner than the horizon of any securities investor; the master trust was structured to solve this.

An issuer transferred eligible receivables into one trust, which issued undivided interests in the pool. During a revolving period of up to several years, principal collections were used to purchase new receivables. After the revolving period, principal was paid down on a schedule, so investors received a bullet or controlled pay-down at a known date. Various credit enhancement features allowed the senior classes to be rated AAA.

Issuers no longer needed deposits in proportion to their receivables, which enabled businesses without branch networks to grow to national scale. Funding was cheaper than the issuer's own unsecured debt, and off-balance-sheet treatment freed capital. Consumers and dealers gained access to more credit, and US revolving consumer credit rose from about $240 billion at the end of 1990 to about $950 billion at the end of 2007.

Investors gained longer-term exposure to a security backed by millions of accounts, with a defined pay-down schedule, a yield above Treasuries, and a liquid secondary market.

Implications for onchain funding

The shared lesson is that financing markets expand when assets are packaged to meet investors' needs. ABCP connected businesses with money funds seeking short-term paper, while master trusts connected revolving receivables with institutions seeking multiyear securities. Each structure opened a new funding channel by shaping the investment to its buyers' requirements.

Tokenized asset-backed credit products apply this principle to onchain investors. They package pools of loans and receivables into tokens that stablecoin holders can purchase to earn yield backed by the cash flows of those loans and receivables. New subscriptions supply capital to the underlying financing strategy. Where these tokens are accepted as collateral, investors can also borrow stablecoins against them and purchase additional tokens, amplifying returns when asset yields exceed borrowing costs. This leveraged carry trade creates another reason to hold the product and can attract funding beyond investors seeking only its unlevered return.

For businesses, that demand can provide another source of funding alongside banks and specialist funds. As investor demand grows, businesses may gain capacity, diversify their funding and potentially lower their costs. The opportunity is particularly relevant where sound financing opportunities remain underserved because existing channels are expensive or difficult to access.

Conclusion

Stablecoin capital is becoming a new source of working capital financing across sectors. The experience of ABCP and master trusts suggests that sustained growth could broaden access, increase financing capacity and ultimately lower funding costs for businesses. Demand from onchain investors pursuing leveraged carry could support a similar expansion. Whether it succeeds will depend on having products that meet both investors’ return requirements and lenders’ requirements for financing them.

For businesses and tokenization platforms, this means identifying assets suitable for use as collateral in onchain lending markets and structuring products around the requirements of curators and stablecoin lenders. Predictable cash flows, reliable valuations and clear repayment mechanisms will determine which assets qualify.

RWA.xyz will continue to support this work through research and analysis. If you are a business evaluating onchain funding as a source of working capital, a sponsor structuring a new product or an allocator considering investments in this market, we would like to hear from you.

Disclaimer

This report is prepared by RWA.xyz for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice. The information herein is based on publicly available materials as of November 2026. Product structures, parameters, and performance may have changed. Readers should conduct their own due diligence and consult qualified advisors before making investment decisions.