Income that Earns: The Infrastructure Behind Dividend-Generating Payroll

Payroll is one of the most widely used financial rails in the world, but historically it has been purely transactional. Employers calculate compensation, process it through a payroll system, and deliver cash to employee bank accounts. What happens to that cash afterward is the employee's responsibility.

This means if employees want dividends, they must manually transfer money into investment platforms or brokerages, with investments often taking days to settle via traditional rails. This manual process makes it harder, and slower, to go from earning money to putting that money to work.

The pilot between Plume, Toku, and WisdomTree demonstrates how tokenization can transform that experience by allowing employees to receive part of their salary directly into an income-generating, regulated money market fund.

Instead of cash sitting idle, income can begin working the moment it is paid.

Why This Use Case Matters—and Why WTGXX Makes This Possible

Tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) are often discussed in the context of investment portfolios or DeFi infrastructure. Payroll introduces an entirely different distribution channel, one that reaches people at the exact moment they receive income.

By allocating a portion of payroll into WisdomTree’s tokenized U.S. Treasury Money Market Fund (WTGXX), employees gain exposure to:

• Daily income generation
• A stable $1.00 NAV
• A regulated ‘40 Act fund backed by U.S. government securities

WTGXX is designed to provide current income while preserving capital and liquidity for both retail and institutions, investing primarily in U.S. Treasury and government securities.

Tokenization adds an additional benefit: 24/7 onchain accessibility and transferability, allowing investors to hold and move regulated fund shares in blockchain wallets while maintaining traditional fund protections.

In this model, payroll becomes a bridge between everyday income and modern onchain financial infrastructure.

How the Payroll Pilot Works

This payroll pilot combines three complementary platforms (WisdomTree Connect, WisdomTree Prime, and Toku) across three separate parties:

Plume, a blockchain focused on real-world asset infrastructure, is the first employer piloting this system. U.S.-based Plume employees can elect to receive part of their salary in WisdomTree’s tokenized money market fund, WTGXX, shares. The company purchases the corresponding fund shares through WisdomTree Connect™ and distributes them to employees who hold them through WisdomTree Prime®.

Toku represents the payroll engine that allows employers to pay in the yield generating asset (WTGXX). Their infrastructure layer is what allows employee compensation to be directed toward a tokenized asset rather than a traditional cash endpoint. This maintains traditional payroll workflows while introducing digital assets

WisdomTree provides both the tokenized MMF, WTGXX, fueling this payroll pilot, and the platforms through which it moves (WisdomTree Connect and WisdomTree Prime):

WisdomTree Connect: Employer Access

Eligible employers, in this case Plume, interact with the system through WisdomTree Connect, the institutional gateway to WisdomTree’s tokenized funds.

Through WisdomTree Connect, an employer can:

• Submit purchase orders for WTGXX
• Manage their treasury through an onchain money market fund
• Transfer those shares onchain to employee wallets

WisdomTree Connect supports institutional integrations through APIs, a web interface, and direct onchain capabilities, enabling institutions to interact with tokenized assets across 8 supported blockchains.

WisdomTree Prime: Employee Access

Employees receive their tokenized fund shares in WisdomTree Prime, WisdomTree’s retail wallet and investing application. Once onboarded to WisdomTree Prime, employees can set up their wallets directly on Toku in order to receive a portion of their payroll in the tokenized money market funds.

WisdomTree Prime allows users to:

• Hold tokenized fund shares and other digital assets
• View balances and performance
• Transfer assets onchain to their external wallets
• Move funds within a broader digital wallet ecosystem

The app combines wallet functionality, investing, and savings in a single platform designed for retail users.

Tokenized MMFs Enable What Traditional Funds Cannot

For employees, this pilot’s payment experience is closer to receiving a direct deposit than investing in a fund. Employees receive their tokenized money market fund shares directly to their wallet using WisdomTree Prime’s onchain transfer functionality, a core innovation in this model.

Non-tokenized mutual funds do not work this way. Ownership records are typically maintained by transfer agents and transactions must move through intermediaries such as brokerages and custodians.

Tokenized funds like WTGXX fundamentally change this experience. Because shares can exist as digital representations on a blockchain, ownership can move peer-to-peer between verified wallets while still maintaining official ownership records through the transfer agent.

This unlocks capabilities that traditional infrastructure cannot easily replicate, such as24/7 asset mobility, wallet-based ownership, programmable finance, and reduced financial friction.

Additionally, tokenized funds introduce continuous interest accrual, where both employees and employers' benefit from interest earned in real time. Employers earn on their cash reserves up until the moment of transfer where employees start earning interest the second the tokenized fund hits their wallets. This removes the financial friction from employees having to invest their salaries into yield bearing assets into earning directly from their salaries.

Here’s how it works

Participating employees set up their wallet in WisdomTree Prime before their first payroll allocation. There are two ways to do this:

Path 1: Generate a Receive Address in WisdomTree Prime

1. Open the WisdomTree Prime app
2. Go to Settings
3. Select Onchain Transfers
4. Tap Receive
5. Choose the blockchain network
6. Click Continue

The app will display a QR code and public wallet address that can be shared for incoming transfers.

Path 2: Link an External Wallet (Optional)

Employees can also link external wallets—such as a Plume wallet—to their WisdomTree Prime account.

1. Open Settings
2. Select Onchain Transfers
3. Tap Link External Wallet
4. Choose wallet type (self-custody or custodial)
5. Select the blockchain network
6. Add the wallet by scanning a QR code or entering the public key
7. Submit the wallet for approval

After approval (which includes minting our soul-bound NFT for verification), the wallet can be used to receive tokenized assets.

Once the wallet is linked, the address can be added to Toku so payroll allocations can be distributed directly. Toku cross-checks for this NFT as part of the payroll workflow before any fund shares are delivered.

A New Distribution Rail for Tokenized Assets

Tokenization has often been described as an infrastructure upgrade for capital markets. Payroll demonstrates something different: a distribution upgrade for financial products.

Instead of requiring users to move money between banks, exchanges, and investment platforms, tokenized funds can now integrate directly into existing financial workflows.

This pilot between Plume and Toku, powered by WisdomTree’s platforms and tokenized money market fund, offers a glimpse of how tokenized assets may become part of everyday financial life—where income, saving, and investing happen in a single seamless experience.

Transforming payroll into a new distribution channel for tokenized real-world assets has massive implications for the future of financial services. By changing how capital formation works at the point of income, it is now possible to eliminate the lag between earning and allocating that has held back retail finance for generations.