A major collaborative pilot program was officially launched at Ripple’s Swell 2025 conference, marking a significant step toward integrating digital assets into traditional finance. The project brings together Ripple, the global payment network Mastercard, the regulated financial institution WebBank, and the crypto exchange Gemini. This initiative focuses on leveraging Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin running on the decentralized XRP Ledger to facilitate the settlement of conventional fiat credit card payments. This undertaking stands out as one of the first of its scale to be spearheaded by a regulated U.S. bank, showcasing a tangible application for stablecoins in the backend of global financial infrastructure. The primary goal is to demonstrate how a compliant, digital currency can dramatically enhance the speed and efficiency of traditional payment settlement processes. The stablecoin at the core of the project, RLUSD, is fully regulated under the State of New York framework and currently maintains a circulation value exceeding $1 billion, reports The WP Times with reference to coindesk.
The strategic partnership highlights the increasing interest from established financial behemoths like Mastercard in adopting blockchain technology to streamline operations. By utilizing the XRP Ledger—known for its speed and low transaction costs—the partners aim to cut down the time and costs typically associated with multi-day fiat settlement cycles. RLUSD’s status as a regulated, dollar-backed stablecoin is critical, providing the necessary compliance and stability required for acceptance by institutions like WebBank. This pilot serves as a real-world test case for migrating core banking functions onto decentralized ledger technology, potentially paving the way for broader institutional adoption of tokenized assets for daily financial operations, thus moving beyond purely speculative crypto use cases.
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