Ripple, BNY Expand Digital-Asset Partnership With XRP, RLUSD Custody Support

Ripple and BNY are expanding their partnership in digital-asset custody and tokenized trade finance.

The companies said in a Business Wire statement on October 27 that they will broaden digital-asset custody capabilities for institutional clients and jointly pursue new blockchain use cases, including tokenized trade finance built on the XRP Ledger.

BNY has started supporting XRP and RLUSD on its digital-asset custody platform, in addition to its existing role as custodian of reserves for Ripple's stablecoin RLUSD and its custody work tied to Ripple Prime. That will allow institutional clients to store and transfer XRP and RLUSD.

The companies also plan to broaden BNY's support for tokenized assets and investment products issued on the XRP Ledger. They are also pursuing a framework that would allow BNY clients to mint and redeem RLUSD directly.

"It is no longer enough to simply issue assets on-chain," Ripple President Monica Long said. "What matters now is putting tokenized assets to work in payments and collateral."

Ripple and BNY are linking financial infrastructure so institutions can move beyond simply holding digital assets and use them in capital markets and trade finance, she added.

The companies are also expanding cooperation in tokenized trade finance. As a first step, they are reviewing a supply-chain finance model with working-capital platform C2FO that would tokenize trade-finance assets such as accounts receivable on the XRP Ledger and broaden investor access.