Arf to use Ripple RLUSD for cross-border working capital

Arf said the first phase would provide RLUSD settlement liquidity on XRPL, with payment firms able to use the service through their existing operations while settlement happens in the background. The company did not disclose a launch date, borrower pricing, participating firms or the size of the pool it plans to make available, leaving the commercial scale of the effort unclear. It also said it has annual global settlement volume of about $10 billion and turns its capital over four times a month, though it did not tie those figures directly to the XRPL initiative.

For Ripple, the deal extends RLUSD beyond trading and custody use cases into transaction financing, a market where stablecoins have the clearest near-term utility. RippleX product head Jasmine Cooper said settlement liquidity is the kind of use case XRPL and RLUSD were built to support. That framing matters because stablecoins are increasingly competing not just as payment instruments, but as plumbing for treasury, collateral and short-duration lending.

The move also fits a broader industry push to make stablecoins useful for institutions rather than just retail transfers. Ripple and DriveWealth said earlier this month they were developing an RLUSD settlement service for brokerage collateral accounts, initially in Europe and later in the U.S. Arf’s plan is similar in spirit, but aimed at payment companies rather than brokerages, suggesting Ripple is testing RLUSD across multiple balance-sheet-heavy workflows where speed and liquidity management matter.

Investors will be watching whether that strategy translates into real transaction volume. On one hand, a working-capital product on XRPL could deepen network stickiness and support demand for RLUSD if payment firms adopt it at scale. On the other, the absence of launch timing, economics and counterparties underscores that the idea is still early and may remain niche until Ripple and Arf prove that the funding can be priced competitively against bank credit and other stablecoin-based liquidity options.

For XRP Ledger, the upside is that it would move the network one step closer to being infrastructure for institutional settlement rather than a speculative rail in search of use cases. The risk is execution: without transparent terms, broad participation and a clear regulatory path, the project may add another proof of concept without materially changing how global payment firms fund themselves.