Pencil Finance Completes $1M On-Chain Student Loan Cycle for 6,600 SEA Students

Pencil Finance has completed its first fully on-chain student loan cycle, financing $1 million in education for approximately 6,600 students across Southeast Asia. The protocol deployed lender capital on-chain and recorded repayments through a structured yield distribution.

The loans were funded by Animoca Brands, Open Campus, and New Campus in July 2025. The senior tranche offered fixed returns, while the junior tranche carried variable returns with first-loss risk. This structure is commonly used in tokenized finance to allocate losses first to the riskiest portion of capital.

Pencil reported that 50% of funded students were female and that 93% came from lower-income households. The company positioned these figures as evidence that the program is reaching applicants who are often overlooked by conventional lending.