Cross River Taps Offchain Labs to Enable Blockchain-Based Loan Tokenization on Arbitrum

Cross River has partnered with Offchain Labs to integrate blockchain-based loan tokenization into its lending platform, enabling loans to be financed and transferred on Arbitrum One from their creation.

Cross River Brings Loan Tokenization to Arbitrum

Cross River announced the partnership on November 3, with production deployment scheduled for early 2027 following successful testing.

The partnership will allow lending partners to finance, hold, and transfer loans through Arbitrum One immediately after origination. Cross River will be building the infrastructure, while Offchain Enterprise Services will build the infrastructure as well.

According to the companies, blockchain records will track each loan’s ownership, financing, repayments, and servicing throughout its lifecycle.

The system will track these activities in a shared ledger, as their ownership changes. Meanwhile, Cross River will retain its role as the regulated bank and lender of record.

In October, Cross River partnered with Ripple to integrate RLUSD into its banking infrastructure. The deal added Cross River’s banking system and stablecoin payments on the XRP Ledger.

Offchain Labs Targets New Lending Products

Cross River hopes the infrastructure will enable them to have a more flexible way of loan distribution and a different funding system. There are several possible participants, such as international investors, on-chain investment funds, and institutions looking to gain exposure to tokenized credit.

Among the planned capabilities identified by the company was a continuous loan purchase programme and lower investment volumes. However, the partners have not announced specific lending products or their commercial launch dates.

Meanwhile, Chainlink introduced institutional DeFi lending infrastructure with Anchorage Digital in October. CustodySync is its service to link lending markets to assets that are held by qualified custodians.

Cross River Targets Early 2027 Deployment

Cross River stated that their current underwriting, compliance and risk management terms and conditions will not change. The bank will remain in charge of the loans, and Offchain Enterprise Services will be responsible for the blockchain infrastructure.

Gilles Gade, the founder and CEO of Cross River, likened this to “origination with tokenization.

“Starting there means one record, fewer steps, from funding through every change of hands,” Gade said.

Offchain CEO Steven Goldfeder said dedicated engineers would work directly with Cross River’s development team. Their solution is an integration of Arbitrum One and embedded wallet infrastructure via Offchain Enterprise Services.

Companies have finished a proof of concept of loan tokenization and are getting ready for deployment. Cross River expects the system to enter production in early 2027, although it has not announced an exact date.