BNY Mellon has integrated XRP and RLUSD, Ripple's dollar-pegged stablecoin, into its custody platform, enabling institutional clients to hold both assets within its digital asset infrastructure.
Simultaneously, Ripple is testing invoice settlement on the XRP Ledger with C2FO, a working capital platform. The pilot will measure transaction volumes, settlement times and cost reduction versus traditional finance rails. RLUSD provides a stable unit of account; XRP serves as the settlement medium.
The two developments address separate but complementary institutional demand vectors: secure asset custody and functional on-chain use cases. BNY Mellon's move removes a technical barrier to XRPL adoption among institutions already holding digital assets. The C2FO test quantifies whether the XRP Ledger can reduce intermediaries and processing friction in supply chain finance—a sector managing trillions in working capital annually.
Key metrics to monitor during the pilot: settlement time versus ACH (typically one to three days), per-transaction costs versus traditional invoice financing fees (typically 0.5 to 2 percent), and transaction throughput. The XRP Ledger processes approximately 1,500 transactions per second; supply chain volume at scale would reveal utilization constraints.
The stablecoin element is material. RLUSD eliminates price volatility during settlement, addressing a primary institutional objection to using volatile native assets like XRP for direct payment. This mirrors the architecture of successful enterprise blockchains: a volatile bridge asset paired with a stablecoin for final settlement.
