Ripple’s New National Trust Bank Puts RLUSD Reserves Under Federal Supervision

Ripple has cleared the last major federal charter hurdle for a bank built around stablecoin reserves and institutional crypto custody.

The company said the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted final approval for Ripple National Trust Bank, moving the institution beyond the conditional approval it received in December 2025. The decision does not turn Ripple into a conventional retail bank.

It gives the company a federally supervised trust-bank platform with a narrow but important set of jobs.

According to Ripple’s announcement, the new bank can manage the segregated reserves behind Ripple USD, serve as collateral trustee for RLUSD holders, and provide fiduciary digital-asset custody to institutions. Those are the parts of crypto finance where large customers care less about slogans and more about who holds the assets, who supervises the process, and what happens when something goes wrong.

RLUSD will still be issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company, Ripple’s New York-regulated limited-purpose trust company. The national trust bank adds federal OCC supervision around reserve management and custody; it does not replace the state-regulated issuer.

That split matters. Stablecoin issuers have spent years arguing that reserves are safe and liquid.

A federally supervised trust bank puts another regulator directly into the infrastructure supporting those reserves. It also gives Ripple a clearer route to offer custody services to enterprises that cannot simply hand digital assets to an ordinary exchange account.

Decrypt reported that RLUSD has grown to roughly $2.5 billion in market capitalization since launching in December 2024. Ripple says BNY remains the primary reserve custodian and that the stablecoin is backed by dollar deposits, U.S. government securities, and other cash equivalents.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse framed the approval as the practical meeting point between crypto infrastructure and banking oversight:

Big news heading into @RippleSwell: the @USOCC has granted final approval for Ripple National Trust Bank.

This gives Ripple a federally supervised platform to support $RLUSD and provide digital asset custody to enterprises.

We’ve always said crypto and banks work better…

— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) October 26, 2026

Ripple’s immediate win is regulatory infrastructure, not a guaranteed price catalyst for XRP. The charter does not declare XRP a bank asset, and it does not give every Ripple product a federal blessing.

What it does is place reserve and custody functions inside a framework that banks, asset managers, and corporate treasurers already understand.

That could become more valuable as tokenized funds and stablecoins begin to share the same institutional plumbing. Aviva Investors has also moved a tokenized share class of its sterling liquidity fund onto XRP Ledger.

The fund itself is about £22 billion, while the new tokenized class was launched at a much smaller scale. The distinction is important, but so is the direction: established asset managers are testing public blockchain rails while demanding familiar controls around reserves and custody.

Big news as Aviva Investors announces the launch of a tokenized share class of the Aviva Investors Sterling (GBP) Liquidity Fund on the XRP Ledger.

The Sterling (GBP) Liquidity Fund is Aviva Investors’ largest fund at around £22 billion in assets under management, and this move…

— Ripple (@Ripple) October 26, 2026

The trust-bank approval gives Ripple a stronger answer to the question institutions always ask after the demo: who is legally responsible for the money and the assets?

Final approval is not the same as a fully scaled business. Ripple National Trust Bank still has to begin operations, win custody mandates, and show that its federal charter produces a better institutional product rather than another layer of compliance cost.

The public OCC application makes clear that the bank was designed around reserve management, fiduciary services, and custody—not consumer deposits and lending. That narrow focus is a feature.

It lets Ripple build around the pieces of digital finance that most need credible supervision without pretending to be a full-service bank.

For the XRP ecosystem, the longer-term opportunity is indirect but real. If RLUSD and tokenized assets gain institutional use, XRP Ledger activity can grow alongside them.

The charter improves Ripple’s credibility inside that market. It does not guarantee adoption, and it does not erase competition from USDC, tokenized bank deposits, or other custody platforms.

Still, this is one of the clearest signs yet that the regulated-crypto race has moved beyond permission to experiment. Ripple now has final federal approval for infrastructure meant to hold reserves and safeguard digital assets.

The next scoreboard will be the institutions willing to use it.

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