What Is Ripple USD (RLUSD)? Ripple's Stablecoin Explained

The token is issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company, LLC (SCTC), which belongs to Ripple Labs Inc. ¹. NYDFS chartered SCTC as a limited purpose trust company. Under that charter, its stablecoin has to be fully backed by liquid, short-term reserves, and SCTC must follow NYDFS rules on reserves and redemptions ⁵. Ripple also says RLUSD has approval from the Dubai Financial Services Authority ⁸.

In December 2025, the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency gave conditional approval for Ripple to form Ripple National Trust Bank. Ripple said the bank would manage RLUSD reserves, adding federal oversight on top of the NYDFS charter ¹². A conditional approval is not a final charter, so check its current status before relying on it.

Ripple has an advisory board for RLUSD. At launch, it included former FDIC chair Sheila Bair, former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, Kenneth Montgomery, David Puth and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen ¹¹.

They are separate assets that do different jobs. XRP is the native cryptocurrency of the XRP Ledger. Its price is set by the market, and it is used as a bridge asset and to pay network fees. RLUSD is a dollar claim issued against reserves, designed to stay at $1 ¹³. You don't need to own XRP to hold RLUSD on Ethereum. On the XRP Ledger, though, a wallet needs a small XRP balance to exist and to cover transaction fees. RLUSD also shows up on several Ethereum layer 2s ⁷.

Minting and redemption. Only customers with a Ripple account under the RLUSD Customer Agreement can buy RLUSD from Ripple or redeem it with Ripple. Those customers redeem at one US dollar per token, under that agreement's conditions and limits ¹. Ripple's marketing describes RLUSD as built for institutions: banks, brokers, exchanges, payment firms and market makers ⁵.

Everyone else uses the secondary market. You buy and sell RLUSD on exchanges, payment apps and DeFi platforms. Ripple publishes a list of these venues but says the list is not an endorsement, and that availability depends on your jurisdiction ¹⁰. What you pay depends on that venue's fees and spread. Ripple doesn't charge you anything for this.

Backing. By 5 p.m. New York time each business day, SCTC must hold reserves worth at least the number of RLUSD in circulation. The reserves are kept in segregated accounts and limited to:

• Treasury bills maturing in three months or less;
• overnight reverse repos backed by Treasuries;
• government money-market funds;
• bank deposits ².

Interest earned on the reserves goes to Ripple, as long as the minimum is still covered. Holders have no direct claim on reserve assets ². That is also why RLUSD is described as not designed to pay a yield ⁴.

Attestations. Every month, an independent US-licensed CPA reports on the RLUSD in circulation and the makeup of the reserves. The firm is appointed under NYDFS's June 2022 stablecoin guidance ⁵. An attestation checks management's figures at a point in time. It is not a full financial-statement audit of the issuer. On October 15, 2026, Ripple reported $2,405.8 million RLUSD in circulation and $2,534.5 million in reserve funds ⁶.

• Freezing. Ripple can blacklist any address holding RLUSD, with or without notice, if the law or its internal compliance policies require it. A blacklisted wallet can't send or receive the token, and the terms warn that a holder may lose all of their RLUSD ³.
• Burn and re-mint. On the same grounds, Ripple can destroy RLUSD in one wallet and mint it in another. Once burned, Ripple has no obligation to re-mint ³.
• Redemption gap. If you can't redeem directly, getting dollars depends on exchange liquidity. Market prices can move away from $1 even while reserves cover the supply ¹.
• Network and bridge risk. Ripple doesn't control the blockchains RLUSD runs on. You bear the loss if you send to the wrong address or the wrong network ¹.
• Issuer and custody concentration. Reserves sit with banks and custodians, with BNY named as primary custodian ⁹. Their failure, or a regulatory action, could delay redemptions.
• Impersonation. Use only the contract addresses Ripple publishes in its developer docs. Fake RLUSD tokens can carry the same name and ticker.