Ripple is pushing into traditional finance with its most coordinated expansion yet. At Swell 2025, executives outlined how roughly $4 billion in acquisitions will anchor a unified setup for trading, payments, custody and treasury operations on the XRP (XRP-USD) Ledger. The aim is to let banks, brokers and corporates settle value onchain without abandoning the systems they already trust.
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The effort follows a new $500 million raise, the planned $1.25 billion purchase of prime broker Hidden Road and an RLUSD settlement pilot with Mastercard (MA), WebBank and Gemini. Ripple’s message is that this isn’t a side project. It’s an attempt to plug crypto rails directly into the machinery of global finance.
Ripple Builds a Unified Trading and Treasury Stack
The Hidden Road deal gives Ripple a prime brokerage backbone, letting institutions trade across spot and derivatives venues with centralized credit, clearing and collateral management. RLUSD or XRP can be posted as collateral where supported, and financing can shift between intraday and term structures without relying on multiple intermediaries.
Ripple is matching this with treasury software integration through its purchase of GTreasury. The setup links onchain settlements straight into ERP and TMS dashboards, so when a payment posts on the XRP Ledger it shows up right away next to cash balances, FX moves and month-end reports. Ripple says this is the only way onchain activity will feel normal for finance teams instead of like a trial run.
Ripple Expands Payments and Custody Infrastructure
The Rail acquisition strengthens Ripple’s payout and back-office capabilities. Virtual accounts, automated routing tools and reconciliation support let RLUSD move through business-to-business payments without forcing finance teams to overhaul their month-end process. Liquidity can be shifted across wallets, subsidiaries and currencies while still fitting inside existing approval flows.
Metaco provides the final layer of safekeeping. Its custody system lets firms set clear permissions, manage keys securely and keep client assets separated. Ripple says these controls matter because big institutions will only handle stablecoins like regular treasury funds if the protections feel as strong as what they already use today.
Ripple Tests Stablecoin Settlement with Card Networks
The RLUSD pilot with Mastercard and WebBank is Ripple’s first step toward moving traditional card settlement onchain. Merchant batches are netted, settled in RLUSD on the XRP Ledger and fed back into the issuer’s accounting workflow without changing rules around disputes or chargebacks. The test is designed to show that stablecoin settlement can slot into existing systems without creating operational friction.
Ripple says early proof won’t come from headlines but from cleaner reconciliations, faster settlement windows and consistent daily volume. If those signals show up, the company believes its bridge between crypto and Wall Street will start to take hold.
At the time of writing, XRP is sitting at $2.4607.
