Ripple and retail brokerage giant Robinhood have significantly expanded their ongoing partnership, bringing Ripple’s USD-pegged stablecoin, RLUSD, directly to Robinhood’s expansive retail and institutional business lines. The comprehensive collaboration, announced on Tuesday during Ripple’s annual Swell 2026 conference in New York, spans a wide array of financial services, including cutting-edge treasury management, enhanced lending operations, and robust trading infrastructure.
According to the official announcement, RLUSD is already live and accessible on Robinhood Chain and Bitstamp by Robinhood, with a broader public rollout slated to hit the mainstream Robinhood app later this year. Furthermore, Robinhood has outlined plans to leverage the stablecoin on the XRP Ledger specifically for institutional settlement procedures, bridging the gap between traditional finance and distributed ledger technology.
The partnership extends far beyond mere customer-facing crypto trading features, diving deep into Robinhood’s internal corporate architecture. Robinhood has committed to adopting Ripple Treasury to oversee and optimize its global cash and liquidity operations. This implementation will cover essential financial workflows, including high-volume payment processing, sophisticated cash flow forecasting, and streamlined intercompany transactions. By integrating Ripple’s treasury infrastructure, Robinhood is modernizing its internal financial machinery to handle capital more efficiently across international borders.
In addition to these treasury and stablecoin integrations, the agreement deepens Robinhood’s existing relationship with Ripple Prime. Ripple Prime currently provides crucial financing services to Bitstamp by Robinhood and is preparing to introduce perpetual futures trading on the exchange later in the year, expanding the investment products available to advanced traders on the platform.
The timing of the partnership underscores the rapid growth of Ripple’s stablecoin ecosystem. Launched in December 2024, RLUSD has experienced a meteoric rise, achieving a market capitalization of $2.57 billion. On-chain data from DeFiLlama indicates that nearly $1 billion of this supply has been issued directly on the XRP Ledger. Meanwhile, Robinhood’s massive user base—which reported 28.6 million funded customers globally as of August—presents a uniquely powerful distribution channel for the stablecoin, potentially scaling its circulation and everyday utility to unprecedented levels.
Ripple expands into custody and trade finance
The sweeping strategic maneuvers announced at the Swell conference were not limited to Robinhood. Ripple also revealed a major expansion of its partnership with financial services titan BNY. Under the updated agreement, BNY’s Digital Asset Custody platform will now officially support the custody of XRP and RLUSD. Looking ahead, the two institutions plan to collaborate closely to enable BNY’s institutional clients to mint and redeem RLUSD directly through the bank, while simultaneously broadening support for tokenized assets issued on the XRP Ledger.
In a parallel development targeting commercial trade efficiency, Ripple has teamed up with working-capital platform C2FO. The partnership aims to integrate financing and settlement for C2FO’s innovative Instant Pay service onto the XRP Ledger, utilizing RLUSD as the underlying settlement asset. The Instant Pay product is engineered to revolutionize commercial supply chains by allowing suppliers to receive immediate payments against approved invoices in mere seconds, bypassing the sluggish multi-day waiting periods typically associated with legacy bank settlement networks.
A spokesperson for C2FO confirmed to Cointelegraph that the Instant Pay service is presently undergoing rigorous testing, with a controlled launch and the first live RLUSD transactions on the XRP Ledger anticipated before the conclusion of the year.
This flurry of high-profile corporate integrations follows a monumental regulatory milestone for Ripple. On Monday, the firm received final, official approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish a national trust bank. This newly authorized institution will be tasked with managing the financial reserves backing the RLUSD stablecoin while simultaneously offering specialized digital asset custody services. Meanwhile, the legal issuance of the stablecoin itself will remain anchored within Ripple’s New York-regulated subsidiary, maintaining a clear separation of powers and strict regulatory compliance as the company deepens its footprint across global financial markets.
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