Ripple and C2FO plan instant invoice settlement on XRP Ledger

What happened

Ripple made two separate announcements on October 27: an expansion of its custody relationship with BNY to cover XRP and RLUSD, and a collaboration with working-capital platform C2FO that would move invoice financing and settlement onto the XRP Ledger using the RLUSD stablecoin.

Under the custody arrangement, BNY's Digital Asset Custody platform now supports both assets, so eligible institutional clients can hold, safeguard and transfer them within the bank's servicing infrastructure. The deal builds on BNY's existing position as primary reserve custodian for RLUSD and its custody work with Ripple Prime. The two firms are also examining a service that would let BNY clients mint and redeem RLUSD directly through the bank, along with tokenized investment products and tokenized trade finance assets such as receivables.

The C2FO plan centres on Instant Pay, a service in which suppliers would continue to draw early payment through C2FO's existing marketplace while participating capital providers finance transactions settled in RLUSD on the XRP Ledger. The companies describe the proposal as a response to standard payment terms of 30, 60 or 90 days, and to conventional bank transfers that can still take several days after a supplier qualifies for early payment. Invoice terms and due dates would remain as originally agreed.

Ripple and C2FO said the arrangement is meant to connect an established working-capital marketplace with blockchain settlement, rather than to create a new financing marketplace. C2FO is taking expressions of interest through a waitlist while the service is prepared.

Why it matters

The two announcements point in the same direction: Ripple is trying to show that RLUSD and the XRP Ledger can be used for actual financial transactions, not just for issuing tokens. Ripple President Monica Long said the company is "moving past the initial issuance of assets onchain," citing payments and collateral as the applications that matter next.

Trade finance is an area where settlement delays have direct consequences for suppliers, who may need funds for payroll, inventory or new orders while they wait to be paid. Carolyn Weinberg, BNY's chief innovation and market transformation officer, said future financial infrastructure would link "payments, liquidity, collateral and securities" across traditional systems and blockchain networks. For Ripple, bringing a bank of BNY's scale and an established invoice-financing platform into the same set of announcements gives its stablecoin a commercial context beyond crypto trading.

What the data shows

According to the C2FO release, RLUSD's market capitalisation stands at roughly $2.5 billion, with more than $1 billion of that issued on the XRP Ledger. The companies say the ledger settles transactions in about three to five seconds. C2FO reports that its existing Early Pay programmes have supported more than $250 billion in working capital through accelerated invoice payments. BNY has not disclosed how many clients currently hold XRP or RLUSD through its custody platform.

Background

The October 27 news follows a series of institutional integrations for RLUSD. On October 12, Standard Chartered introduced institutional RLUSD custody through its Dubai International Financial Centre branch, with a separate collateral arrangement involving LMAX Group still being developed. Three days later, Ripple signed an agreement with Cross River to connect RLUSD with banking services spanning domestic transfers and cross-border payments. BNY also remains custodian of assets held by Aviva Investors' Sterling Liquidity Fund, which recently introduced tokenized fund shares on the XRP Ledger.

What is still unclear

Several details remain open. Ripple and BNY have not said when direct minting and redemption of RLUSD through the bank might be available. The companies have not disclosed how much financing has been committed to Instant Pay, and they have not confirmed that a completed production transaction has taken place using the new arrangement. The wider BNY trade-finance work is described as subject to client requirements, and C2FO's Instant Pay is still gathering interest through a waitlist rather than operating at scale.

What to watch

The next signals to watch are whether C2FO's Instant Pay records its first live settlement in RLUSD on the XRP Ledger, whether BNY adds direct minting and redemption for the stablecoin, and whether institutional investors take up tokenized receivables as an asset class. Any disclosed transaction volumes would give a clearer picture of how much of this is operational rather than planned.

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