What are tokenized bank deposits, and how do they differ from stablecoins and XRP?

The full answer

What separates a tokenized deposit from a stablecoin?

The Bank for International Settlements draws the line at backstops. On August 28, 2026, BIS General Manager Pablo Hernández de Cos said at the Jackson Hole symposium that, in the absence of the backstops that underpin trust in traditional and tokenised deposits, stablecoin issuers remain exposed to run risk [3]. In that framing a tokenized deposit carries the same supports as an ordinary bank deposit, and a stablecoin does not.

The BIS made a broader case a year earlier. Its Annual Economic Report of June 24, 2025 said stablecoins perform poorly when assessed against the three tests for serving as the mainstay of the monetary system [4]. The report named a tension between the promise to always deliver par convertibility and the need for a profitable business model that involves liquidity or credit risk [4]. It concluded that stablecoins may at best serve a subsidiary role, while noting their future role remains uncertain [4].

These are the views of a body of central banks. Stablecoin issuers are not quoted here, and the page on whether USDC and Circle can do cross-border payments without XRP covers the stablecoin side.

What did the live payments on Swift’s ledger actually use?

CoinDesk reported on September 7, 2026 that Swift rolled out its blockchain ledger in July with 17 banks [1]. CoinDesk [1] (Secondary, September 7, 2026) reported that DBS in Singapore and Citi’s New York office completed a cross-border USD payment on September 5, 2026 using tokenized deposits on Swift’s ledger, settling in minutes.

According to CoinDesk, the DBS and Citi payment was the second confirmed live transaction on Swift’s ledger, after HSBC and Standard Chartered’s first live cross-border transfer in August [1]. The two banks completed the first cross-border USD payment over a weekend using tokenized deposits on Swift’s Digital Ledger, CoinDesk reported, executed on September 5, 2026 between DBS in Singapore and Citi’s New York office [1]. It settled in minutes rather than the industry norm of up to two business days, the same report said [1]. CoinDesk set out the problem the banks were addressing: a corporate treasurer moving liquidity from Singapore to New York on a Friday has to wait until the following Monday at the earliest [1].

CaptainAltcoin checked the claim, circulating online, that this payment used XRP. It reported on September 10, 2026 that the transaction did not use XRP, did not settle on the XRP Ledger and was not evidence that Swift had selected XRP [2]. Earlier, on April 1, 2026, 24/7 Wall St. reported that Swift was building its own blockchain-based shared ledger which, the outlet wrote, would let it handle real-time, 24/7 settlement without relying on Ripple or any other external blockchain [7]. The status of that ledger is covered in what Swift’s blockchain ledger is and whether it is live.

CoinDesk framed the tests as a response to competition: Swift’s network faces pressure from stablecoins and tokenized deposits that settle around the clock [1].

Where does JPMorgan’s Kinexys fit?

crypto.news reported that JPMorgan’s Kinexys is the largest bank-run tokenization platform in existence, and that several members of a 50-member tokenization working group, most prominently JPMorgan, run their own competing tokenization ledgers [5]. J.P. Morgan says JPM Coin SM is a deposit token issued on the Layer 2 Ethereum network Base that lets clients move money, post collateral and settle transactions on public blockchains, and that clients can mint it directly from a Blockchain Deposit Account; I could not find whether Kinexys moves tokenized deposits between blockchains as of October 2, 2026; see whether JPM Coin or Kinexys competes with XRP.

Where does XRP sit next to these two kinds of money?

XRP is neither a deposit nor a stablecoin. CCN described the XRP Ledger on August 20, 2026 as the blockchain infrastructure that supports stablecoins, payments and tokenized assets, while XRP is its native crypto asset [6]. Messari’s Q1 2026 report, as covered by crypto.news, tied XRP to network use through transaction fees, account reserves, liquidity, asset ownership and bridging across currencies [8].

crypto.news reported that in the tokenized-Treasury settlement Ripple executed with JPMorgan, Mastercard and Ondo, which cleared on the XRP Ledger, the instrument carrying the money was RLUSD [5]. The outlet argues Ripple built RLUSD to capture the settlement flow that XRP’s volatility rules out. The same outlet wrote that an asset that can move ten percent in a day is disqualified from the cash leg by definition, and that Ripple built RLUSD to capture the settlement flow that XRP’s volatility rules out [5].

The stablecoin figures on the ledger point the same way. Blockworks’ State of XRP report, as cited by CCN on August 20, 2026, put XRPL-native stablecoin supply at $825.5 million at the end of Q2 2026, with RLUSD at $676.9 million, or 82% [6]. Stablecoin transfer volume on the ledger rose 208% to about $10 billion in Q2 2026, with RLUSD generating about $9 billion of it, per the same report [6]. More on the stablecoin itself is on what RLUSD is and what it means for XRP.

The job XRP is said to do is conversion between currencies. 24/7 Wall St. reported on April 1, 2026 that only around 40% of RippleNet partners use Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity service, the product that requires XRP as a bridge asset between currencies [7]. The mechanics are on how XRP works as a bridge.

What is the case that XRP still has a role?

The strongest evidence on the other side comes from corridors where currencies change hands. 24/7 Wall St. named India-to-Pakistan, UAE-to-Philippines and Japan-to-Thailand on April 1, 2026 as corridors where Ripple’s direct local bank partnerships and existing On-Demand Liquidity give it an edge that Swift’s new framework had not yet solved [7]. The same outlet reported that Japanese financial institutions presented live pilot data showing cross-border payments using XRP settled 60% cheaper than Swift and in under four seconds [7].

XRP supporters also argue that stablecoin growth helps XRP later. crypto.news summarised the argument on July 8, 2026: RLUSD adoption seeds the ledger with the institutional liquidity that XRP-based collateral and bridging would one day plug into [5]. The outlet called the argument coherent and said its first half is observable and its second half is not yet [5]. The comparison of an XRP bridge with a stablecoin route is on how an XRP bridge differs from using USDC.