Ripple and Swiss financial intermediary Arf have partnered to bring RLUSD-denominated settlement financing to the XRP Ledger, targeting licensed companies that need short-term working capital for cross-border payments. The initiative will use RLUSD for credit disbursement and repayment while Arf handles borrower underwriting and working-capital decisions, separating on-chain settlement from off-chain credit assessment.
According to Arf’s official October 22 announcement, the company currently reports approximately $10 billion in annual global settlement volume, with its capital turning over around four times per month. Arf’s settlement loans are typically repaid within one to five days as underlying payment flows settle, allowing the same capital to be repeatedly redeployed rather than committed to long-duration financing.
The model targets payment, card and remittance companies that otherwise need to pre-fund transactions across multiple markets. RLUSD provides the dollar-denominated asset for the financing flow, while XRPL provides the settlement infrastructure and XRP remains required for ledger fees and certain reserve requirements.
Native XRPL Lending Remains a Second Phase
The partnership is structured in stages. The first phase will provide direct RLUSD settlement liquidity on XRPL using Arf’s existing infrastructure, allowing licensed institutions to access financing without necessarily operating their own on-chain treasury systems.
A later phase would move more of that activity into XRPL’s proposed native lending infrastructure. Single Asset Vaults are designed to pool capital on-chain, while the Lending Protocol can use those funds for fixed-term uncollateralized credit. These features are not yet active on mainnet and still depend on XRPL’s amendment process, where protocol changes require validator support before activation.
The network has already moved closer to that stage through the LendingProtocolV1_1 validator process. Approval of one amendment alone does not activate the complete lending stack, because native credit also depends on the underlying Lending Protocol and Single Asset Vault functionality.
Even after activation, borrower assessment would remain external to the blockchain. XRPL’s lending specification deliberately relies on off-chain underwriting and risk management, while loan creation, repayment and default accounting can be represented on-chain. The architecture therefore tokenizes credit administration without replacing the institution responsible for deciding who receives credit.
RLUSD Expands Into Institutional Working Capital
The Arf partnership extends RLUSD beyond simple stablecoin transfers into short-duration financing tied to real payment flows. Ripple has already used RLUSD in a Singapore trade-finance settlement pilot, where programmable payments are triggered after predefined commercial conditions are verified. Both initiatives position RLUSD as institutional settlement infrastructure rather than relying on the stablecoin solely as a trading asset.
XRPL’s institutional asset stack has also expanded through products such as Aviva Investors’ tokenized liquidity fund share class and Ripple’s investments in ZILO and Licuido. Those deployments broaden the network’s financial infrastructure but should not be treated as evidence of corresponding lending demand or capital utilization.
Arf’s reported $10 billion annual settlement volume provides an existing payments business behind the integration, but the announcement does not disclose how much capital will initially move through XRPL or RLUSD. The measurable milestone will be the amount of settlement credit actually originated and repaid on the ledger, particularly if the partnership later migrates into native XRPL lending after the required amendments become active.