Why Ripple’s $16 trillion payment volume isn’t boosting XRP

Buying XRP doesn’t give you shares in Ripple, although the company’s growing list of new ventures and financial partners makes it easy to assume their fortunes should move together.

Ripple can earn a lot of money from those relationships without passing a dollar to token holders, who have no claim on its profits.

XRP did rise during the latest round of announcements, climbing from $1.29 on Oct. 25 to $1.32 on Oct. 28, a small gain (but still a gain) of about 2.3%. However, that still left it roughly 11% below its September close, despite another week of recognizable names signing up for Ripple’s services.

Over the same September-to-October window, Bitcoin lost about 2.7%, while Ethereum fell approximately 12.2%, so XRP wasn’t unusually weak compared with every major cryptocurrency.

That’s why the price action doesn’t really tell us what holders and traders think about these announcements. The announcements themselves, on the other hand, tell us what customers plan to use in the coming weeks and months.

Some give institutions better access to XRP, while others focus on a dollar-backed asset that Ripple sells alongside it.

Ripple has more than one thing to sell

Ripple sells financial software and services, while XRP is the cryptocurrency native to its XRP Ledger, the public blockchain usually shortened to XRPL.

XRP pays transaction costs on that network and can work as an intermediary between different assets, but customers can use some Ripple services without choosing XRP as the asset they send.

Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin is designed to maintain a value of one US dollar, backed by reserves that include dollars and short-term US government securities. Businesses moving RLUSD choose a dollar-denominated asset rather than taking the price exposure that comes with holding XRP.

Institutions can also pay Ripple for cash-management software or digital asset custody without becoming an XRP investor. Ripple’s $900 million revenue target reflects growth across all of its products, including acquired businesses, and refers to its projected annualized revenue pace at year-end rather than money already earned during 2026.

On Oct. 26, the company said it had received final approval for a national trust bank, with approved activities including managing RLUSD-related reserves and providing digital-asset custody. The charter expands what Ripple can offer institutions without requiring those customers to buy XRP.

What the partners are actually using

On Oct. 27, BNY announced that it now supports XRP and RLUSD on its digital asset custody platform, allowing eligible institutional clients to hold and transfer them through a provider they may already use for other assets.

That removes a significant obstacle for institutions that want exposure to XRP but need to do so through an established custody provider.

Robinhood’s agreement with Ripple focused more on RLUSD. The company said it plans to use the stablecoin on XRPL for institutional settlement and integrate Ripple Treasury into its own cash-management operations.

RLUSD was already available on Robinhood Chain and Bitstamp when the agreement was announced, with availability in the Robinhood app expected later in the year.

Coinbase added RLUSD across its retail and institutional platforms on Oct. 28, supporting transfers across multiple blockchains. So customers can now use Ripple’s stablecoin on another network without creating a transaction on the XRP Ledger.

DriveWealth, which provides brokerage infrastructure, is integrating RLUSD on XRPL for settlement in Europe, with a US expansion planned.

C2FO’s planned Instant Pay service would settle payments in RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar-backed stablecoin, using the XRP Ledger. So a business that needs to send $1 million in RLUSD wouldn’t need to buy $1 million worth of XRP, though the network’s much smaller transaction fee would still be paid in XRP.

Ripple explained why it offers that choice in November 2024, saying XRP isn’t necessary as an intermediate asset when the currencies involved are already easy to exchange.

The company argues the token is more useful when a direct exchange is harder to arrange, with a payment provider converting the sender’s currency into XRP before exchanging it for the currency the recipient needs.

A million transactions can burn just 10 XRP

At the XRP Ledger’s documented minimum fee, one million standard transactions would consume just 10 XRP. Each costs 10 drops, equivalent to 0.00001 XRP, and those fees are permanently destroyed rather than paid to Ripple or distributed to holders.

That’s why a business can move a large amount of money without spending much XRP on fees, which is good for the business but limits what holders can infer from a rising transaction count. The dollar value moving across the ledger doesn’t determine the standard transaction fee.

Accounts also need XRP reserves, currently starting at 1 XRP per account, with another 0.2 XRP required for many types of records an account maintains. Those requirements create a reason to keep XRP available, but they aren’t calculated as a percentage of the money passing through, and validators can change the settings.

When XRP acts as a bridge, a payment can move from the sender’s currency through XRP before being converted into the recipient’s currency. SBI Remit’s XRP-based service uses that mechanism, with XRP supplied in response to payment requests rather than requiring the recipient to hold it as an investment.

The tokens used for the transfer can then become available for another transaction, so a provider processing a billion dollars over a year doesn’t necessarily need to hold a billion dollars’ worth of XRP throughout that year.

The calculation depends partly on how quickly the tokens can be reused and how much the provider needs available when payments arrive together.

Growing payment volumes could require larger XRP balances, particularly where trading markets are thin or replenishing inventory takes time. Providers have to decide how much to keep on hand to meet those demands, including the extra capacity they want when normal trading conditions deteriorate.

Ripple says its products enabled more than $16 trillion in transactions during 2025, but that number covers its broader business rather than just payments settled in XRP.

Ripple Treasury, built on the GTreasury acquisition, reported facilitating $13 trillion in payments volume during 2025.

In April 2026, it introduced digital-asset capabilities that allowed customers to manage those assets alongside conventional cash balances, extending a treasury-management business that already handled substantial payment activity.

That gives it an established customer base to approach with its newer products, including support for XRP and RLUSD balances. Customers can use the software for stablecoin payments and other operations in fiat currencies.

There is XRP ownership you can count

The Bitwise XRP ETF held approximately 131.2 million XRP at the end of December 2025 and about 413.8 million as of Oct. 27. That’s a 215% increase, with the fund holding more than three times its year-end token balance despite the weaker price.

However, those numbers measure tokens held. Bitwise’s filings record both purchases and XRP contributed in exchange for newly issued fund shares, so some tokens can enter the fund without being bought on the market as part of that transaction.

SBI Remit provides a more explicit example of commercial XRP use than an agreement that just mentions Ripple.

Its September 2023 expansion into Southeast Asian bank-account remittances named XRP as the bridge asset and SBI VC Trade as the supplier responding to payment requests, although that announcement doesn’t establish current volumes or subsequent growth.

Stablecoin activity on XRPL can also create opportunities to use XRP. The ledger’s exchange can route a trade between two tokens through XRP when that offers a better exchange rate than trading them directly, meaning the native token can participate even when neither party ultimately wants to hold it.

More assets trading on the network could make that intermediary role useful more often, provided XRP offers the better route. The mechanism doesn’t require every exchange to pass through the token, and traders can use a direct route when its pricing is more attractive.

XRP’s circulating supply is approximately 63.35 billion tokens, against a maximum supply of 100 billion. The growth in one fund’s holdings is happening within that much larger market, where other holders can choose to sell.

Ripple’s displayed disclosure is dated June 30 and reports about 37.66 billion XRP held in total, including 32.6 billion in escrow.

Escrow locks existing tokens until specified conditions are met. Ripple’s original arrangement also allowed unused tokens to return to escrow after a release, extending the schedule instead of putting the entire amount into immediate circulation.

On-chain tracker XRP Insights lists 1 billion XRP becoming releasable on Nov. 1. Its October record shows 1 billion released and 700 million subsequently locked again, leaving a net 300 million outside escrow from that cycle without establishing how much was sold.

A release makes tokens available under the escrow terms, but tracking the amount sold requires following what happens afterward. The same restraint applies on the demand side: a custody service can make XRP easier to own without showing how many customers have acquired it.

What XRP holders still need to know

The recent partnership releases don’t provide the XRP-routing and inventory figures needed to calculate their effect on token demand.

Robinhood names RLUSD as its institutional settlement asset, while BNY announces custody support without publishing the XRP balances clients have placed there.

If a payment provider reported how much activity passed through XRP, holders would have much better information to track than total company volume.

Reporting the balance needed to support that activity would show whether a growing business requires more tokens on hand or can handle additional payments by reusing the same inventory.

Investors can buy XRP in anticipation of that growth, but they’re judging future demand rather than receiving a contractual share of Ripple’s earnings. The token doesn’t give them a claim on the revenue generated when a customer buys another Ripple product.

The next partner could make the relationship much easier to assess by publishing how much XRP it needs to keep available for the service. When that business doubles, will it need a larger balance, or will the same tokens simply turn over faster?