Ripple and BNY, the New York bank that already guards the reserves of Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin, announced on Tuesday 27 October 2026 that they are widening their collaboration. According to Ripple’s press release, dated New York and published on Ripple’s website, BNY now supports XRP and RLUSD on its Digital Asset Custody platform, where eligible clients can safekeep, hold and transfer them. The two companies also say they will explore tokenized trade finance on the XRP Ledger, starting with a supply chain finance project with the working-capital platform C2FO.
The headline sounds bigger than the content. Of everything in the release, only the custody part is in place today. Minting and redeeming RLUSD through BNY is a plan that still needs BNY’s final sign-off and regulatory approval. The trade finance work with C2FO is something the firms say they are “exploring”: no pilot, no start date, no amount, no bank or company whose invoices would be financed.
This is Ripple’s account. The release quotes a BNY executive and a C2FO executive, but by Tuesday evening we had found no separate statement on BNY’s newsroom or from C2FO, and no outlet with its own reporting beyond rewrites of the release. No fee, client, volume or cost was disclosed.
What Ripple and BNY made live: custody of XRP and RLUSD
XRP is the native asset of the XRP Ledger (XRPL); RLUSD is Ripple’s dollar stablecoin. Both now sit on BNY’s Digital Asset Custody platform. The release does not define “eligible”, and it does not say whether any client has deposited XRP or RLUSD with BNY yet.
The step builds on two existing links. BNY has been the primary custodian of RLUSD’s reserves since an announcement on 9 July 2025, when it also took on transaction banking for the stablecoin. The new release adds that BNY has a custody relationship with Ripple Prime, Ripple’s prime brokerage arm. Custody of the reserves (the cash and short-term Treasuries behind each token) is a different job from custody of the token itself. The release presents BNY’s support for the tokens themselves, on the platform its clients use, as the new step.
For institutions, that is the practical change. The release says the platform keeps digital assets “within the governance, controls and resiliency” of BNY’s wider servicing business. An asset manager that already keeps securities at BNY could, if the bank counts it as eligible, hold the two tokens in the same place. How many will do so is unknown; the release gives no figure.
What is planned: RLUSD minting through BNY and more XRPL assets
Two further steps are announced as intentions. Both carry an asterisk pointing to a footnote: all future product plans are “subject to final BNY and regulatory approvals.”
First, BNY “intends to broaden” its support for tokenized assets and investment products issued on the XRPL, as institutional use cases develop. No asset, issuer or date is named. Second, BNY intends to work with Ripple so that its clients can mint and redeem RLUSD directly through the bank. Done at the bank, a client could turn dollars held at BNY into RLUSD, and back, without going through another firm. The release does not say when, for which clients, or at what cost.
Ripple puts RLUSD at about $2.5 billion in market capitalization. The release also says the XRPL has processed more than 4.6 billion transactions since launch, settling in about three to five seconds. Those figures are Ripple’s own. For readers new to the asset type, our guide to stablecoins explains how a dollar token and its reserves fit together.
Ripple’s own banking plans moved the day before. Late on Monday 26 October, Ripple said the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency had given final approval to Ripple National Trust Bank, which is to manage RLUSD reserves, as we reported in our piece on the Ripple trust bank charter. The BNY release says nothing about whether BNY’s role as reserve custodian changes once that bank opens.
What is only explored: financing C2FO invoices on the XRP Ledger
The trade finance part is the least advanced. Ripple and BNY “intend to advance tokenized trade finance on the XRPL, subject to client requirements,” the release says. As a “first step”, they are exploring a supply chain finance initiative with C2FO, which the release calls a global platform for working capital, “focused on expanding investor access to the asset class.”
How supply chain finance works, in short
A supplier ships goods and sends an invoice. The buyer approves it but pays in 30, 60 or 90 days. Supply chain finance lets the supplier get paid early, at a discount, by someone who then collects the full amount from the buyer when the invoice falls due. The financing comes from banks or investors. Because the buyer has already approved the invoice, the risk sits mostly on that buyer’s ability to pay.
Tokenizing those receivables means recording each approved invoice, or a smart contract holding reserves of two or more tokens, supplied by users, that a decentralized exchange uses to execute trades automatically at a price set by a formula.">pool of them, as a token on a blockchain. The release says this could “broaden investor access” and make the assets simpler to manage and distribute. In plain terms, the aim is to let more investors buy short-term corporate invoices, an asset class mostly held by banks today.
Ragui Selwanes, President and COO Americas at C2FO, said in the release that the companies want to see how “a new model for financing approved receivables has the potential to broaden access to capital.” The wording is cautious: “explore”, “potential”.
What the release leaves out
The release does not say which asset would settle the deals, RLUSD, XRP or bank money. It names no investor, no bank lender, no company whose invoices would be put on chain and no amount. It gives no timetable and does not say which approvals, if any, a tokenized receivables product would need. C2FO’s role beyond being the source of the receivables is not described.
Live, planned or explored: the three parts side by side
| Item | Status per the release | Date, size or client given? |
|---|---|---|
| BNY custody of XRP and RLUSD | Live, for eligible clients | No client or volume |
| More XRPL tokenized assets at BNY | Intended, subject to approvals | No asset or date |
| Minting and redeeming RLUSD through BNY | Planned, subject to approvals | No date or fee |
| Tokenized trade finance with C2FO | Being explored, subject to client requirements | No pilot, amount or date |
| RLUSD market capitalization | About $2.5 billion | Ripple figure, 27 October 2026 |
Ripple’s earlier trade finance pilot sits in Singapore, without BNY
This is not Ripple’s first move into trade finance. On 25 March 2026, Ripple said it had joined the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s BLOOM initiative and would pilot a cross-border trade settlement use case with Unloq, a Singapore supply chain finance technology firm whose SC+ platform is built on the XRP Ledger. In that design, RLUSD payments are released only when agreed conditions are met, such as a verified shipment. The March release gave no go-live date or volume and named no bank. BNY is not mentioned.
BLOOM has since grown: the central banks of Malaysia and Thailand joined it this month, as covered in our report on BLOOM’s expansion, though no cross-border pilot there has a date either.
Blockchain trade finance networks have shut before
Banks have tried to put trade finance on blockchains for years, and three well-known networks closed within 18 months. we.trade, a platform owned by a group of European banks, shut in June 2022 after failing to secure more investment. Marco Polo, backed by more than 30 banks and members, followed: on 22 February 2023 the Irish High Court appointed provisional liquidators, with about €5.2 million owed, Global Trade Review reported, after a planned $12 million deal with Bank of America fell through.
Contour, whose shareholders included HSBC, Citi, BNP Paribas and Standard Chartered among nine banks, told members on 27 October 2023 that it would stop operating on 30 November. Global Trade Review reported that not all bank shareholders would join a new funding round and none would lead it; the company chose to close while it could still pay what it owed.
According to Ledger Insights, an unnamed source said Contour handled 60 to 70 transactions a month earlier in 2023. In each case the reports point to the same gap: too few banks and companies using the network for its owners to keep paying, rather than a failure of the software.
The Ripple, BNY and C2FO idea is built differently. As the release describes it, the starting point is approved receivables from C2FO’s existing marketplace, with investors as the target buyers, rather than a new network that many banks must join and move their letters of credit onto. Whether that avoids the volume problem cannot be judged yet: the release gives no number for C2FO’s receivables or for investor demand.
A busy week for Ripple and the XRP Ledger
The BNY release lands among several XRPL announcements from regulated finance. Aviva put a share class of its £22 billion sterling money fund on the ledger, though the first £50 million is Aviva’s own money, as detailed in our Aviva XRPL fund report. Franklin’s tokenized money fund grew to about $200 million on the XRPL, but one wallet holds every share of the Franklin fund.
The release also came out on the first day of Ripple’s Swell conference in New York, which runs from 27 to 29 October. The release does not mention the event, and further announcements there may add detail.
What to watch next
Custody aside, the first sign of progress would be a BNY or regulatory announcement that RLUSD minting at the bank is approved, with a date. The next would be a first named C2FO transaction on the XRPL, with its size, its investors and the asset used to settle it. A statement from BNY or C2FO in their own channels would also help, since for now the only full account is Ripple’s.