Since November 6, 2025, Ripple and Mastercard have run a live pilot settling real credit card transactions on the XRP Ledger using RLUSD, Ripple’s USD-backed stablecoin. In this back-end test, merchants continue to receive fiat currency instantly via Mastercard’s authorization network, while RLUSD finalizes the underlying settlement in seconds instead of the traditional one-to-three-day banking clearance. Ripple provides the ledger infrastructure, compliance tooling (KYC, AML, transaction monitoring) and issues RLUSD with full 1:1 reserve backing held in U.S. Treasury securities and cash. WebBank, as the FDIC-insured issuer, ensures regulatory oversight, and Gemini delivers custody, liquidity management and operational support. If scaled, this model could prove that regulated blockchain settlement can plug into existing card networks without disrupting banks, merchants or consumers, challenging the decades-old assumption that card settlement must rely on multi-day banking rails.

In the first 50 days since launch, XRP-based ETFs have accumulated $1.3 billion in institutional inflows, locking up 746 million XRP—1.14% of the circulating supply—across five issuers with virtually no redemptions. Daily inflows averaged $27.7 million, driven by vehicles such as Canary Capital’s early mover fund, Grayscale’s conversion-powered trust rollover, and Franklin Templeton’s low-cost offering. At this pace, ETFs would reach $5 billion of assets under management by mid-May 2026, removing an estimated 2.6 billion XRP (4% of supply) from active markets. This structural supply reduction complements broader exchange outflows, which have seen over 1.5 billion XRP move into private custody in 2025, tightening liquidity and potentially reshaping market depth over time.