BNY now holds XRP and the RLUSD stablecoin on its institutional custody platform, in a major expansion of its work with Ripple. For traders, this matters because custody is the gatekeeper for big money: when a bank of BNY's size offers safekeeping inside its own controls, institutions can hold these assets without building their own crypto infrastructure.
Key points:
- BNY now supports XRP and RLUSD on its Digital Asset Custody platform, building on its role as the primary reserve custodian for RLUSD and its custody relationship with Ripple Prime.
- BNY clients will be able to mint and redeem RLUSD directly through the bank, and the firms are exploring tokenized trade finance on the XRP Ledger with working-capital platform C2FO.
- RLUSD has grown to about $2.5 billion since launching in December 2024, with more than $1 billion issued on the XRP Ledger, which has processed over 4.6 billion transactions.
Today, the expansion goes beyond a simple listing. BNY's platform is designed to let eligible institutional clients safekeep, hold and transfer digital assets within the bank's wider governance and controls, rather than through a separate crypto-only custodian. Ripple president Monica Long said the industry is moving past simply issuing assets onchain, and the next step is making tokenized assets usable for payments and collateral across financial markets.
The trade-finance piece is where the story gets practical. C2FO's new Instant Pay solution aims to settle financing for approved invoices on the XRP Ledger using RLUSD, so suppliers receive funds in seconds rather than waiting days for bank transfers to clear. Across global supply chains, businesses can wait 30, 60 or even 90 days to be paid, and C2FO's early-pay programs have already helped businesses access more than $250 billion in working capital. Under Instant Pay, the invoice terms and due dates stay exactly as agreed, while participating capital providers fund the early payment.
Read also: Ripple Wins Final OCC Approval for National Trust Bank — What's Next?
What happens next?
Separately, Ripple also announced a partnership with Robinhood covering stablecoins, treasury operations and institutional markets. RLUSD is already available on Robinhood Chain and Bitstamp by Robinhood, with availability in the Robinhood app expected later this year, and Robinhood will use the stablecoin for institutional settlement on the XRP Ledger. Together with the BNY move, that puts RLUSD in front of both bank clients and retail trading users, which is exactly the kind of distribution traders watch when judging whether a stablecoin can keep growing from $2.5 billion.
For traders, the honest caveat is timing. Ripple and BNY say the custody-related services and broader trade-finance applications remain subject to further development and, for some planned products, final regulatory approvals, and they have not given a date for when the mint-and-redeem service or Instant Pay go fully live. So the next catalysts are concrete and easy to track: the first named BNY custody clients, the Instant Pay waitlist turning into live supplier payments, and RLUSD's size rising above $2.5 billion. If those arrive, this is a real bridge between banks and public blockchains; if they slip, it stays an announcement, not yet a market.
Read also: What Is XRP and What Is It Used For? A Simple Beginner's Guide
— BitByLine News Desk
This post is news only, not financial advice. Always do your own research before buying or selling crypto.
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Sources: The Block, Ripple