XRP: Ripple Plans New RLUSD Financing Services

Ripple partners with the Swiss platform Arf to offer short-term financing in RLUSD to licensed payment companies on the XRP Ledger. Announced on October 22, 2026, this service starts without the native XRPL lending protocol, which is still awaiting a vote by validators.

In brief

• Ripple and Arf announce, on October 22, short-term financing in RLUSD on the XRP Ledger.
• Advances are generally repaid in one to five days.
• Arf declares approximately 10 billion dollars in annual settlements.
• The native XRPL lending is not activated due to insufficient votes from validators.
• The amount of RLUSD deployed by Arf has not been disclosed.

Arf brings RLUSD to payment companies on XRPL

Based in Zug, Arf will first provide liquidity in RLUSD directly on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). RLUSD is Ripple’s dollar-backed stablecoin launched in December 2024. These advances are generally repaid in one to five days, as the payments are settled.

In its press release, Arf states it processes about 10 billion dollars in settlements per year with capital reused four times per month. These figures are provided by the company itself. However, the amount of RLUSD it will place on XRP Ledger is not specified.

Jasmine Cooper, product lead at RippleX within Ripple, believes this use case matches the purpose of XRPL and RLUSD.

A short credit to prefinance cross-border payments

A payment company often has to advance funds in the destination country before collecting the payment. In this regard, Arf highlights that bank credit lines can require months to set up and significant collateral.

The mechanism is simple: the company borrows RLUSD, settles the transaction, and repays when its own funds arrive. Arf keeps credit evaluation and financing decisions off-chain. This ties the model to “PayFi,” finance built around payment flows.

Is the native XRP Ledger lending already activated?

No. Arf plans to use it once available. It relies on two amendments:

• XLS-65 which creates single-asset vaults;
• XLS-66 which allows fixed-term loans.

As of October 19, XLS-66 had 19 votes out of 35 and XLS-65 had 21. Activation requires more than 80% support for two consecutive weeks. Halborn conducted a new code audit and found no critical or high-level flaws.

What the announcement changes for RLUSD and XRP

For RLUSD, it adds a credit use. On August 25, Ripple indicated its market capitalization exceeded 2 billion dollars, nearly one billion of which was issued on the XRP Ledger. Other data however show a 117 billion dollar decline over 15 months.

For XRP, no quantified effect is currently demonstrated. Certainly, XRPL fees are paid in XRP. However, the volume of this financing remains unknown. No conclusion on the XRP price can be drawn from this. At the time of writing, this digital asset trades around $1.30.

Nevertheless, three elements to watch closely in the coming days are:

• the evolution of votes on XLS-65 and XLS-66;
• the amount of RLUSD actually deployed by Arf;
• the onchain data Arf makes available.

Ripple (XRP) and Arf thus launch short-term financing in RLUSD on XRPL, but its volume remains unknown. Extension to native lending depends on a vote still far from the required threshold. The coming weeks will tell if usage follows the announcement.