BNY Mellon Expands Ripple Partnership, Integrates XRP and RLUSD for On-Chain Trade Finance Trials

BNY Mellon Expands Partnership with Ripple, Integrating XRP and RLUSD into Custody Platform

New York, NY – Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon) is significantly deepening its collaboration with Ripple, bringing the digital asset XRP and Ripple’s U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, RLUSD, onto its institutional custody platform. This expansion allows BNY Mellon clients direct capabilities to mint and redeem RLUSD within the bank’s infrastructure. Furthermore, the two entities, alongside supply chain finance platform C2FO, are piloting a solution to provide financing for approved accounts payable on the XRP Ledger, aiming to reduce settlement times from days to mere seconds.

The expanded partnership, detailed in an official announcement by Ripple, builds upon BNY Mellon’s existing role as a primary custodian for RLUSD’s reserve assets and its engagement with Ripple Prime. The new arrangement extends BNY Mellon’s services to include the custody of XRP and RLUSD for institutional clients, effectively integrating two of Ripple’s core digital assets into one of Wall Street’s most established custody frameworks.

Monica Long, President of Ripple, stated that this development facilitates the integration of XRP and RLUSD into the existing custody and settlement processes of major financial institutions. This allows institutional clients to hold these assets without the need to build separate infrastructure.

While custody represents a significant step, the potential for industry-wide transformation lies in trade finance. The collaboration between Ripple and C2FO focuses on “approved accounts payable.” Once a supplier delivers goods and the buyer approves the invoice, the supplier can receive immediate payment, with a financier taking on the remaining payment term. Traditionally, this process can take weeks and relies heavily on manual, paper-based verification. By leveraging the XRP Ledger for settlement, suppliers could receive funds within seconds, while the original payment terms and due dates remain unchanged.

In parallel, Ripple also announced a new partnership with Robinhood, encompassing stablecoins, treasury management, and institutional markets. Robinhood plans to adopt RLUSD on its Robinhood Chain and Bitstamp, integrate it into its proprietary application within the year, and utilize the XRP Ledger for institutional settlements with RLUSD, incorporating Ripple’s treasury management tools.

RLUSD, launched in December 2024, currently has a market capitalization of approximately $2.5 billion, with over $1 billion issued on the XRP Ledger. The XRP Ledger itself has processed over 4.6 billion transactions since its inception, with an average settlement time of 3 to 5 seconds. These metrics are central to Ripple’s argument that on-chain settlement is now capable of handling institutional-scale volumes.

The regulatory landscape also plays a crucial role. Ripple recently received final approval for a national trust bank charter from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), bringing RLUSD under federal regulatory oversight. This development is seen as a prerequisite for BNY Mellon’s expanded custody services. In Asia, Singapore’s BLOOM initiative, involving the central banks of Malaysia and Thailand, is working to establish common standards for cross-border stablecoin settlements. If Ripple’s custody and trade finance models prove successful in the U.S., these two systems could emerge as direct competitors in the realm of cross-border corporate payments.

Two key areas warrant further observation. Firstly, the trade finance solution developed by BNY Mellon and C2FO is still in its early stages. The timeline for actual implementation and the scale of adoption remain undetermined, making the transition from pilot to routine operation critical. Secondly, as institutional use cases for RLUSD continue to grow, the question remains whether its market capitalization can break through its current plateau of $2.5 billion and truly challenge the scale of mainstream dollar-backed stablecoins. For financial institutions in Taiwan, the “bank custody combined with on-chain settlement” model represents the most regulation-aligned framework for evaluating the use of stablecoins in processing import and export receivables.