Ripple expands BNY partnership

Ripple has expanded its collaboration with BNY to support institutional digital asset custody and explore blockchain-based trade finance.

BNY, already the primary reserve custodian for Ripple’s US dollar stablecoin RLUSD, now supports both RLUSD and XRP on its Digital Asset Custody platform. The move gives eligible institutional clients the opportunity to safekeep, hold and transfer the assets within BNY’s wider governance, controls and servicing model.

BNY also intends to broaden support for tokenised assets and investment products issued on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), and work with Ripple to enable clients to mint and redeem RLUSD directly through the bank, subject to final BNY and regulatory approvals.
Ripple and BNY are also exploring tokenised trade finance on XRPL, subject to client requirements. As an initial step, they are assessing a supply chain finance initiative with working-capital platform C2FO, focused on widening investor access to the asset class.

Monica Long, president of Ripple, said: “We’re moving past the initial issuance of assets onchain – now, it’s all about making these tokenised assets usable for payments and collateral across financial markets.”

“With BNY, we’re connecting the necessary components of financial infrastructure on the XRP Ledger so institutions can move from holding digital assets to using them within capital markets and trade finance seamlessly.”

Carolyn Weinberg, BNY’s chief innovation and market transformation officer, said future market infrastructure would connect payments, liquidity, collateral and securities through “architected bridges between traditional scaled systems and always-on blockchain technology”.

Ragui Selwanes, president and COO for the Americas at C2FO, said the initiative could create a new model for financing approved receivables, potentially broadening access to capital while retaining the customer relationships and experience firms already use.