Ripple and BNY Expand Custody Alliance to XRP and Tokenized Trade Finance

Ripple and BNY announced an expansion of their strategic digital asset alliance on Oct. 27, broadening institutional custody services and initiating joint work on tokenized trade finance ¹. Under the expanded arrangement, BNY has integrated support for $XRP alongside Ripple's dollar-pegged stablecoin, RLUSD, into its Digital Asset Custody platform ¹.

The initiative deepens an existing operational relationship between the two firms ¹. BNY already serves as the primary reserve custodian for RLUSD and provides custody services for Ripple Prime ¹. Ripple said RLUSD has reached roughly $2.5 billion in market capitalization ¹. BNY plans to enable eligible clients to mint and redeem RLUSD directly through the bank, while also extending support to other tokenized assets and investment vehicles built on the XRP Ledger, subject to regulatory clearances and client specifications ¹.

Advancing Tokenized Trade Finance

Beyond basic safekeeping, the institutions are targeting capital markets workflows by deploying trade finance instruments onto the public blockchain ¹. As an initial use case, Ripple and BNY are collaborating with working capital platform C2FO to develop a supply chain finance solution designed to tokenize approved corporate receivables on the XRP Ledger ¹.

Ripple president Monica Long stated that the focus is shifting from simple onchain issuance toward operational utility, facilitating the use of tokenized instruments for payments and collateral management across legacy market infrastructure ¹. The XRP Ledger has completed upwards of 4.6 billion transactions since its inception, recording typical settlement speeds between three and five seconds ¹. The development coincides with broader enterprise adoption of Ripple's stablecoin and ledger services, following earlier integrations such as DriveWealth's adoption of RLUSD for brokerage settlement infrastructure.