Digital asset infrastructure firm Ripple has been granted approval to establish a national trust bank and struck separate partnerships agreements with BNY and Robinhood.
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Having already given conditional approval, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has now granted Ripple final approvals for chartering Ripple National Trust Bank.
The new bank's approved activities will include managing the segregated reserves supporting Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin, acting as collateral trustee of the reserves for the benefit of RLUSD holders, and providing fiduciary digital asset custody services.
It will also be authorised to provide fiduciary digital asset custody services, giving Ripple another federally supervised capability as enterprises increasingly integrate digital assets into existing payments, trading, and treasury infrastructure.
Brad Garlinghouse, CEO, Ripple, says: “We’ve spent over a decade building regulated financial infrastructure that institutions can actually use at scale. A national trust charter gives us an even stronger foundation for RLUSD and the institutional products we’re building across payments, custody and capital markets.”
Meanwhile, the company has expanded its strategic collaboration with BNY to broaden institutional digital asset custody capabilities and explore new use cases for blockchain technology, including tokenised trade finance.
The move build's on BNY’s role as primary reserve custodian for RLUSD, and its custody relationship with Ripple Prime. BNY now also supports XRP, the native digital asset of the XRP Ledger, and RLUSD on its Digital Asset Custody platform.
A separate deal with Robinhood sees RLUSD become a key stablecoin across the retail trading app's digital asset ecosystem. RLUSD is live today on Robinhood Chain and Bitstamp by Robinhood, and is expected to be available later this year in the Robinhood app. Robinhood will also leverage RLUSD on the XRPL for institutional settlement.
Robinhood is also integrating Ripple Treasury into its own operations to modernise and automate things like cash and liquidity management, cash flow forecasting, payments, risk management and intercompany netting.