Cross River Bank is integrating Ripple USD (RLUSD), Ripple’s U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, into its proprietary Core Operating System, with support for transactions on the XRP Ledger.
The Fort Lee, N.J.-based bank, a New Jersey state-chartered FDIC member, announced the partnership on Oct. 15. RLUSD becomes an additional payment rail on Cross River’s platform, next to ACH transfers, wire transfers and real-time payments. Eligible fintech customers can reach it through a single API without standing up their own blockchain systems, the bank said.
What the bank says it unlocks
Adam Goller, Cross River’s head of fintech banking, said the bank is expanding on stablecoin capabilities already in development. The setup is meant to let fintechs convert between U.S. dollars and RLUSD, settle cross-border payments and treasury moves around the clock, and keep those rails on the same banking platform as traditional payment options.
Markus Infanger, senior vice president for RippleX at Ripple, said Cross River is bringing RLUSD and the XRP Ledger’s settlement into a regulated banking platform so fintechs can move money in real time across borders without running a parallel system.
The two companies also pitched the work as a settlement option for payment networks, giving issuers and acquirers more flexibility to settle intraday. The release cites typical XRP Ledger settlement of about three to five seconds, fees of a fraction of a cent, and more than $1.3 trillion settled on the ledger to date. Those are company figures and have not been independently verified.
What’s narrow — and what this is not
Availability is narrow. Cross River’s release states that services are currently only available in limited U.S. states. It did not name those states or give a timeline for a wider rollout.
What this is not: a custody product, a retail deposit product, or a sign that every Cross River client can use RLUSD today. The release describes payment and settlement access for fintechs and payment networks through the bank’s existing core. Separately this week, DriveWealth said it plans to use RLUSD on the XRP Ledger for brokerage settlement starting in Europe, with no launch date, and Standard Chartered said institutional RLUSD custody is live at its Dubai branch. Those are different arrangements.
The release did not name any fintech or payment network that is using the RLUSD rail yet.
Sources: Cross River; Business Wire; Ripple