What does Ripple do today, and is it just a company that sells XRP?

The full answer

Ripple describes itself as “a technology company whose solutions use XRP, RLUSD, and other digital assets.” The same page calls it “a holder of and one of many developers building on and contributing to XRP.”[1] Its product pages (checked on September 29, 2026) and its releases describe the businesses below. Ripple’s documentation names XRP in one of its payments products. Several of the businesses describe settlement in stablecoins or ordinary currency.

Which businesses does Ripple run today?

Payments. Ripple’s cross-border payments page calls Ripple Payments the company’s cross-border payments solution, “letting businesses, banks, and fintechs move money globally in as little as 3-5 seconds.”[2] Ripple’s cross-border payments page describes the product as serving businesses, banks, and fintechs. Ripple’s cross-border payments page, checked September 29, 2026, says the company offers “last-mile rails across 60+ markets.” It tells customers they can “pay in, pay out, and settle in RLUSD, USDC, USDT, or fiat.”[2] A March 3, 2026 Ripple release says its purchases of Palisade and Rail let customers “collect, hold, exchange and payout in both fiat and stablecoins.”[3] An April 2026 Ripple post says the platform “supports multiple stablecoins — including USDC, USDT, and RLUSD.”[4]

Custody. Ripple’s custody page describes Ripple Custody as “a self-custody technology that enables secure transfer, settlement, and tokenization of digital assets.” It calls custody “the foundational first step for institutions and enterprises to securely enable use cases across stablecoins, tokenization, trading and beyond,” and carries a quote attributed to a digital custody product manager at DZ Bank.[5] The product has its own page: what Ripple Custody is and which banks use it.

RLUSD. Ripple says its dollar stablecoin is “natively issued on XRP Ledger, Ethereum, and other blockchains” and “redeemable 1:1 for US dollars.”[6] Its issuer, Standard Custody, “is chartered and supervised by NYDFS as a limited purpose trust company.” Ripple’s transparency page gave $2,395.6 million of RLUSD in circulation as of September 3, 2026.[7]

Prime brokerage. On April 8, 2025 Ripple announced it was buying the prime broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion.[8] Ripple says the purchase created Ripple Prime, which offers “multi-asset clearing, prime brokerage and financing across digital assets, FX, precious metals, exchange-traded derivatives, OTC swaps, fixed income repo and more.” Its Prime page, checked September 29, 2026, reports “$3T+ Clearing annually across markets” and “300+ Institutional customers”.[9] These figures are Ripple’s own and are company-reported. More on the business is at what Ripple Prime is.

Treasury software. Ripple announced a $1 billion purchase of GTreasury, a maker of treasury management systems, on October 16, 2025.[10] CoinDesk reported on January 30, 2026 that Ripple then launched Ripple Treasury, which lets corporate finance teams “move money across borders using Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin.”[11]

A trust bank, not yet open. On December 12, 2025 the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) “conditionally approved” a national trust bank charter for Ripple National Trust Bank.[12] The OCC’s letter says the bank plans to manage the reserve behind RLUSD and to provide “cryptocurrency custody service to affiliates and unaffiliated institutional customers.” Final approval “will not be granted until all preopening requirements are met.”[13] No final approval was found in OCC releases searched on September 29, 2026. The details are on whether Ripple is becoming a bank.

Where does XRP fit in these businesses?

Ripple names XRP directly in On-Demand Liquidity (ODL), a Ripple payments product. Ripple’s developer documentation says “ODL uses the digital asset XRP as a bridge currency.”[14] The current payments product page lists three stablecoins (RLUSD, USDC, USDT) and fiat as settlement assets.[2] The Ripple Prime page passages quoted above list asset classes, digital assets among them, without naming XRP.[9] Which products depend on XRP, product by product, is covered in whether banks need XRP or just Ripple’s software.

How does Ripple make money, and how much still comes from selling XRP?

As of September 29, 2026, Ripple’s releases and reports give no revenue breakdown by business line.

The court record sets out the SEC’s allegations about past XRP sales. In the SEC’s case against Ripple, the court’s July 13, 2023 ruling set out the SEC’s allegation of “Institutional Sales under written contracts for which it received $728 million” and “Programmatic Sales on digital asset exchanges for which it received $757 million.”[15] Since 2017 Ripple had published a quarterly XRP Markets Report “to provide transparency into its XRP holdings.”[16] The Q1 2025 edition, dated May 5, 2025, said Ripple had decided “to sunset the report in its current form starting in Q2 2025.”[16] No later edition has been published as of September 29, 2026. In a report published July 29, 2022, ripple.com stated that Ripple’s total sales, net of purchases, ended the quarter at 0.47% of global XRP volume, according to CryptoCompare TopTier (CCTT) volumes [23].

XRP is still released from escrow and made available to Ripple. crypto.news reported on September 1, 2026 that the September release was part of Ripple’s programmed monthly XRP escrow schedule. About 31.28 billion XRP remained in escrow afterwards, according to an independent tracker the outlet cited. The same report said that “an escrow unlock makes XRP available to Ripple but does not prove any market sale.”[17] What Ripple bought with its money over the years is traced on what Ripple has bought.

Is “just a company that sells XRP” a fair description?

On Ripple’s own product pages and releases, no. Payments, custody, RLUSD, Prime and Treasury are each described with stablecoins, fiat or several asset classes. XRP is named directly only in the ODL documentation and Ripple’s general description of its solutions. That is a reading of Ripple’s own descriptions. Ripple has given no revenue split as of September 29, 2026, so it is not known how much income comes from these products and how much from XRP.

The strongest critique points the other way. 24/7 Wall St. argued on August 13, 2026 that “most of Ripple’s institutional deals now settle in its RLUSD stablecoin,” and that XRP “is only used to pay the network fee.”[18] The same article says “XRP still has a job in the routes stablecoins cannot reach.”[18] Ripple’s ODL documentation, which names XRP as a bridge currency, conflicts with the claim that XRP only pays the network fee.[14] How the product lines connect is laid out on how Ripple’s business lines fit together, and whether any of this success reaches XRP holders is tested on whether Ripple’s success lifts XRP.