$XRP’s relationship with banks splits into two separate stories that get blended together constantly: banks using the $XRP Ledger as settlement infrastructure, and banks using $XRP the token itself.
Ripple, the company behind both, has signed up more than 300 banks and financial firms through its RippleNet network, but most of them use RippleNet’s messaging layer to move fiat currency faster, not $XRP itself. A growing number of institutions have also started building directly on the $XRP Ledger for tokenization and stablecoin settlement, again largely without touching $XRP as an asset.
Only a smaller group of institutions actually use $XRP the token, mainly through a specific product called On-Demand Liquidity (ODL).
Why Do So Many Banks Work With Ripple But Not With $XRP?
RippleNet and $XRP are not the same thing, even though headlines often blur the two. RippleNet is a payment messaging network, similar in concept to SWIFT, that lets banks send payment instructions to each other faster and with more transparency. A bank can join RippleNet, use it for years, and never hold a single unit of $XRP.
Santander is the clearest example. Its retail transfer app, One Pay FX, has processed more than $5 billion in payments using RippleNet’s messaging tools. Santander relies on this infrastructure to speed up settlement and give customers visibility into transfer status, but it does not use $XRP as a bridge currency for liquidity.
ODL is different. It’s the product where $XRP actually does something. Instead of a bank pre-funding accounts in every country it sends money to (a system called nostro/vostro accounting), ODL converts the sending currency into $XRP, moves it across borders in three to five seconds, then converts it into the receiving currency on the other end. This removes the need to lock up capital in foreign accounts ahead of time.
- RippleNet: messaging only, works entirely in fiat currency
- ODL: uses $XRP as a bridge asset for near-instant settlement
- The two can run side by side, but only ODL creates direct demand for $XRP
Do Banks Use the $XRP Ledger or the $XRP Token?
The $XRP Ledger (XRPL) is the underlying blockchain, the same public infrastructure that carries $XRP transactions, but banks can build on it, issue stablecoins on it, and settle assets through it without buying or holding $XRP beyond a fractional-cent network fee. Several major institutions have done exactly that in 2026.
- Société Générale, France’s third-largest bank with roughly $1.8 trillion in assets, launched its MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin, EUR CoinVertible ($EURCV), on the $XRP Ledger in February 2026 through its digital arm, SG-FORGE. XRPL became $EURCV’s third blockchain, after Ethereum and Solana, and the bank used Ripple’s custody platform to secure reserves.
- Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest lender at roughly $1.6 trillion in assets, is integrating Ripple’s technology stack across cross-border payments, foreign exchange workflows, and digital asset custody, but has stated it will use the infrastructure without adopting $XRP directly.
- Aviva Investors, a UK asset manager, partnered with Ripple to tokenize traditional fund structures directly on XRPL.
- Archax, a UK-regulated digital securities exchange, committed to bringing $1 billion in additional tokenized assets onto the ledger by mid-2026.
Total tokenized real-world assets on XRPL reached roughly $4 billion by early July 2026, spread across 291 separate projects, after standing at about $2.3 billion in February. For comparison, the broader on-chain real-world asset market across all blockchains stood near $29.25 billion around the same period, meaning XRPL holds a modest but growing share of a much larger tokenization trend.
Ripple has also begun adding zero-knowledge proof technology, developed with RISC Zero’s Boundless network, to let banks verify transactions are valid and compliant without revealing amounts or counterparties, an update aimed squarely at institutions like SBI Holdings, Zand Bank, and Guggenheim Treasury Services that need privacy before committing treasury operations on-chain.
The clearest example of Ledger-not-token adoption came in May 2026, when JPMorgan, Mastercard, and Ondo Finance completed the first cross-border, cross-bank redemption of a tokenized U.S. Treasury fund. Ondo redeemed part of its OUSG tokenized Treasury holdings on the $XRP Ledger, Mastercard’s Multi-Token Network carried the payout instruction, and JPMorgan’s Kinexys platform delivered the dollar settlement to Ripple’s bank account in Singapore, all in under five seconds, compared with the one to three business days a similar transfer normally takes through correspondent banks. The asset leg settled on XRPL, but the actual money movement ran through $RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar stablecoin, with $XRP appearing only as the network fee.
An IMF report on tokenization trends cited Société Générale’s $EURCV deployment on XRPL as an example of banks choosing permissionless blockchains for regulated stablecoins over private, closed ledgers, a sign that XRPL’s institutional role is being noticed beyond Ripple’s own marketing.
Taken together, these cases confirm that bank adoption of the $XRP Ledger is real and accelerating, but it is a separate trend from bank demand for the $XRP token.
Which Institutions Actually Use $XRP Through ODL?
A smaller list of banks and payment firms use ODL in practice, mostly concentrated in remittance corridors where speed and cost matter more than in typical corporate banking.
- SBI Holdings (Japan): Ripple’s oldest and largest partner, running SBI Remit and ODL-based transfers into Southeast Asia through a joint venture, SBI Ripple Asia
- Tranglo (Malaysia): operates ODL corridors for regional remittances
- Interbank (Peru): an ODL customer for cross-border payments
- Travelex Bank (Brazil): the first Latin American bank on ODL, using $XRP for full cross-border settlement
- UnionBank (Philippines): uses RippleNet and ODL to speed up remittances from overseas workers
One useful signal analysts point to is whether a partner runs its own $XRP Ledger validator node, since that requires actual technical commitment rather than a signed agreement. SBI Holdings, Alloy Networks, and Bitso have done this. Firms that stop at a press release or a letter of intent typically have not.
MoneyGram is a cautionary example. It was one of the earliest and most publicized ODL partners starting in 2019, with ODL volume through the company reportedly growing sevenfold within months. The formal partnership wound down in 2021, and MoneyGram is no longer an active ODL user.
Where Does Bank of America Fit Into All This?
The banks named in the Ledger deals above got there through operational partnerships. Bank of America’s relationship with Ripple looks different, and it’s worth separating the two.
Bank of America is listed as a RippleNet member and has filed blockchain-related patents going back to 2017, but it has never confirmed direct internal use of $XRP or the $XRP Ledger. What is documented is narrower: a February 2026 SEC filing showed Bank of America holding roughly 13,000 shares of the Volatility Shares $XRP ETF, worth about $224,640. That’s exposure through a regulated fund, not operational use of the token or the Ledger.
Bank of America has also started letting its wealth advisors recommend crypto ETFs to clients, a separate but related shift in how traditional banks are approaching digital assets.
How Does SWIFT’s New Framework Change the Picture?
In early 2026, SWIFT introduced a new retail payments framework covering more than 50 banks across over 25 payment corridors, with the first wave targeted to go live by mid-2026. At least 30 of those banks already have ties to Ripple’s ecosystem, including Santander, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered, and JPMorgan.
SWIFT’s announcement did not mention Ripple, and the framework itself does not require $XRP anywhere in the payment flow. Around 40% of the overlapping banks reportedly use ODL, where $XRP functions as the bridge asset, while the rest use RippleNet purely for messaging.
Separately, SWIFT itself is building a blockchain-based shared ledger with more than 30 banks from 16 countries, including Deutsche Bank, aiming at the same real-time cross-border settlement Ripple’s technology targets, a sign that XRPL is not the only blockchain infrastructure banks are testing.
A separate development adds another layer. Thunes, a Singapore-based payments company that partners with Ripple, brought stablecoin payouts to all 11,500 SWIFT-connected banks through standard SWIFT messaging in September 2025. That creates a routing path where a payment can originate on SWIFT, get routed through Thunes, and settle on Ripple’s ODL rails using $XRP as the bridge, even without the originating bank directly holding $XRP.
What Does the Regulatory Backdrop Look Like Right Now?
Ripple’s SEC lawsuit concluded in 2025, and in December 2025 the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency conditionally approved a Ripple National Trust Bank charter. In March 2026, the CFTC and SEC jointly classified $XRP as a digital commodity, removing a barrier that had kept some U.S. institutions from committing capital to XRPL. Together, these gave both $XRP and the $XRP Ledger their clearest regulatory footing yet for institutional use in the United States.
The next major variable is the CLARITY Act, a bill that would classify $XRP as a commodity under federal law more permanently rather than leaving that determination to regulators case by case.
A Senate Banking Committee vote to advance the bill in May 2026 pushed $XRP’s price up about 4.5% in a single day, showing how sensitive the token is to this specific piece of legislation. As of early July 2026, the bill’s Senate floor vote has slipped past its original July 4 target, with floor action now expected in late July or early August, partly due to a dispute over an ethics provision tied to the president’s own crypto holdings.
Recent Updates
On the regulatory side, Ripple recently added a concrete win this week: on July 6, the company secured full Crypto Asset Service Provider authorization under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), granted through Luxembourg’s Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier. This completes Ripple’s MiCA compliance and gives it a clearer legal footing to offer its products, including ODL, to banks across all 30 European Economic Area countries, adding to the regulatory groundwork already laid by the 2025 SEC case resolution and the OCC’s conditional bank charter approval.
A separate move on June 30 shows how Ripple is positioning itself among banks even outside its own $XRP Ledger. Ripple joined Open USD (OUSD), a new consortium-governed stablecoin backed by more than 140 companies, including Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Stripe, Coinbase, Google, and BNY Mellon.
Unlike Ripple’s own $RLUSD, Open USD has no single controlling issuer; member companies share governance and reserve income instead. Ripple joined as a day-one integration partner rather than an issuer, meaning the $XRP Ledger becomes one of several blockchain rails the coin can run on, alongside networks like Solana and Coinbase’s Base.
Ripple continues to run $RLUSD separately, and Ripple President Monica Long has said the company’s plan is to grow $XRP, $RLUSD, and its role in Open USD together rather than treat them as competing bets. Analysts note this deal reflects Ripple’s institutional standing more than it creates new demand for $XRP itself, since day-to-day settlement inside Open USD would not require $XRP.
Not every recent signal points the same direction. According to market data aggregated by Kraken, Goldman Sachs liquidated roughly $154 million in $XRP ETF holdings around the same period the Senate’s CLARITY Act timeline slipped, a reminder that institutional positioning can move in both directions as the bill’s outcome remains unresolved.
Conclusion
$XRP’s relationship with banks today runs through three separate channels: RippleNet’s fiat messaging, the $XRP Ledger’s growing role as tokenization and stablecoin infrastructure, and On-Demand Liquidity, the one product where $XRP the token genuinely does the settlement work. Hundreds of institutions use RippleNet, a smaller but expanding group including Société Générale, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan has built directly on the $XRP Ledger for tokenized assets and stablecoins, and a narrower list, mostly in remittance corridors, uses ODL to move value in $XRP itself.
Ripple’s move into the bank-and-payment-giant-backed Open USD consortium extends the same pattern seen across 2026: it strengthens Ripple’s and the Ledger’s institutional standing without automatically creating direct demand for $XRP. Regulatory developments, particularly the CLARITY Act in the U.S. and Ripple’s newly completed MiCA license in the EU, remain the clearest levers that could shift more of these bank relationships from infrastructure-only toward actual $XRP usage.
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