Ripple and Robinhood have broadened their collaboration in a way that goes beyond retail crypto access. In an announcement timed with Ripple’s Swell 2026 conference in New York, the companies said Robinhood will bring the RLUSD stablecoin into more parts of its business, including institutional settlement and integrations tied to treasury, lending and trading.
RLUSD is already live on Robinhood Chain and Bitstamp by Robinhood, with a launch inside the Robinhood app planned for later this year. The expanded plan also calls for RLUSD settlement on the XRP Ledger for institutional customers, while Robinhood will adopt Ripple Treasury to support internal cash and liquidity operations.
Key takeaways
- Robinhood says RLUSD will be used for both retail distribution and institutional settlement, with a planned app launch later in 2026.
- Ripple Treasury will be integrated into Robinhood’s internal financial infrastructure, covering cash flow forecasting, liquidity operations and intercompany transactions.
- RLUSD adoption is set to extend on the XRP Ledger not only for settlement, but also for broader settlement workflows tied to Ripple’s Instant Pay.
- BNY will support custody of both XRP and RLUSD through its Digital Asset Custody platform, with plans that include minting and redemption access for bank clients.
- RLUSD’s reported scale—DeFiLlama data cited at $2.57 billion market capitalization—suggests the stablecoin is moving toward more mainstream distribution channels.
Robinhood expands RLUSD across customer and institutional rails
The most visible part of the update is that RLUSD will move further into Robinhood’s ecosystem. Ripple and Robinhood said RLUSD is available on Robinhood Chain and on Bitstamp by Robinhood, and that Robinhood intends to add RLUSD within the main Robinhood app later this year.
For institutional use, Robinhood also plans to leverage the XRP Ledger for RLUSD-based settlement. That matters because stablecoin settlement has different operational requirements than simple customer on-ramps and off-ramps: institutions typically need predictable liquidity, clearer settlement timing, and tighter integration with existing compliance and finance processes.
The companies also positioned the partnership as more than a customer-facing product. Robinhood will adopt Ripple Treasury to manage global cash and liquidity operations. The integration is described as covering payment processing, cash flow forecasting, and intercompany transactions, indicating that RLUSD’s role may grow in how Robinhood manages internal funding and liquidity rather than only how users trade or hold the asset.
How Ripple Prime and Bitstamp-by-Robinhood fit into the plan
Alongside the RLUSD push, Robinhood highlighted its expanded relationship with Ripple Prime, the financing arm that supports Bitstamp by Robinhood. The announcement also reiterated Ripple Prime’s plans to introduce perpetual futures trading on the exchange later this year.
From an implementation standpoint, this combination—financing services on one side and stablecoin settlement and integrations on the other—may reduce friction between trading venues, liquidity providers, and custody/settlement workflows. Even where the user experience is unchanged, improved backend integration can translate into faster or more streamlined settlement processes.
RLUSD scale and what distribution could mean
RLUSD was launched in December 2024. According to DeFiLlama data cited in the announcement, the stablecoin has reached a market capitalization of $2.57 billion, with nearly $1 billion issued on the XRP Ledger.
Robinhood also said it had 28.6 million funded customers globally as of August. While funded users are not the same as users actively transacting RLUSD, the figure still signals a potentially meaningful distribution channel if RLUSD becomes available in the main app as planned.
Investors and traders will likely watch for how quickly RLUSD adoption ramps after app availability, and whether issuance concentrates on the XRP Ledger at an accelerating pace as institutional settlement use expands.
BNY custody support and Instant Pay settlement using RLUSD
Ripple also announced an expanded partnership with BNY, a major financial services provider. BNY said it now supports custody of XRP and RLUSD through its Digital Asset Custody platform. The companies plan to work together so BNY clients can mint and redeem RLUSD directly through the bank, alongside expanded support for tokenized assets issued on the XRP Ledger.
In addition, Ripple partnered with working-capital platform C2FO to bring financing and settlement for Ripple’s new Instant Pay service onto the XRP Ledger, using RLUSD. Instant Pay is designed to allow suppliers to receive payments against approved invoices in seconds rather than waiting days for traditional bank settlement.
A spokesperson for C2FO told Cointelegraph that the service is currently in testing, with a controlled launch expected, and that the first RLUSD transactions on the XRP Ledger are expected by the end of the year.
Taken together, the BNY custody expansion and the C2FO-linked Instant Pay testing suggest RLUSD is being positioned for both asset-holding use cases (custody and settlement) and real-economy payment workflows (invoice-based financing and rapid settlement).
Regulatory momentum: the trust bank approval context
The announcements arrive after Ripple received final approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Monday to establish a national trust bank, according to earlier coverage from Cointelegraph.
Ripple’s plans for the trust bank are described as including management of reserves backing RLUSD and providing digital asset custody services, while stablecoin issuance would remain with Ripple’s New York-regulated subsidiary. For market participants, this is a key detail: it suggests a clearer separation between issuance and custody/treasury functions, which can be important for compliance planning and operational risk management.
For readers tracking RLUSD, the combination of app-level distribution plans, institutional settlement tooling, major custody support, and a developing regulated infrastructure backdrop raises the question of what comes next: whether usage grows faster after the app launch, and how quickly tokenized real-world payment flows move from testing to broader rollout.
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