Standard Chartered launched institutional custody of Ripple USD (RLUSD) on the XRP Ledger on October 12, giving the bank’s eligible clients a regulated way to hold Ripple’s dollar-backed stablecoin. The custody service is live through Standard Chartered’s DIFC branch in Dubai, supervised by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA). In parallel, the bank is working with Ripple and LMAX Group to let institutions use RLUSD as trading collateral without moving the tokens out of custody, according to the bank’s announcement. XRP, the XRP Ledger’s native asset, traded near $1.37 on the day of the news.
Standard Chartered’s RLUSD Custody Is Now Live
The bank described the move as the next phase of a collaboration aimed at institutional adoption of RLUSD. Eligible clients can now access Standard Chartered’s digital asset custody infrastructure for RLUSD issued on the XRP Ledger, a public blockchain the bank said is built for fast, low-cost settlement. The service is offered through Standard Chartered Bank’s DIFC branch, which operates under DFSA supervision inside the Dubai International Financial Centre. Clients that already use the bank’s digital asset custody can hold RLUSD through the same infrastructure they use for other tokens.
Waqar Chaudry, Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets, framed the launch around how institutions manage risk. “Institutional clients want to participate in digital asset markets without compromising on how their assets are safeguarded or how risk is managed,” Chaudry said. Jack McDonald, Ripple’s senior vice president of stablecoins, added that RLUSD “was built for exactly this kind of institutional use case.”
The LMAX Collateral Plan Is Not Live Yet
The second part of the announcement — letting institutions pledge RLUSD as collateral on LMAX Group’s trading venues — has not launched. Standard Chartered intends to extend its “collateral mirroring” model to LMAX, so the value of eligible RLUSD collateral is reflected on the trading venue without the underlying tokens being transferred. The bank said the design is meant to reduce transfer-related operational risk, optimize counterparty exposure and improve capital efficiency, but the integration remains subject to final documentation, testing, applicable laws and internal approvals, with no launch date disclosed.
Luke Dorney, LMAX Group’s head of custody for digital assets, said adopting the collateral mirroring model gives clients “greater flexibility in how they hold and deploy RLUSD” while maintaining the custody and risk standards institutions expect. The plan builds on a partnership Ripple and LMAX announced in January 2026 to expand institutional use of the stablecoin.
Why the Launch Matters for Ripple and XRP
The announcement extends Standard Chartered’s digital asset footprint, which already includes institutional Bitcoin and Ether spot trading in the UAE. A systemically important bank adding custody for RLUSD marks another step toward bank-grade infrastructure for Ripple’s stablecoin, which crossed the $1 billion market-cap mark within its first year of launch.
RLUSD is issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company, a Ripple subsidiary supervised by the New York Department of Financial Services, and is backed one-to-one by US dollar deposits, short-term Treasury bills and cash equivalents. Ripple positions the stablecoin, alongside XRP, as the foundation of its payments, custody and treasury products for financial institutions. The custody launch therefore matters less for the token’s short-term price than for the on-ramps it opens to regulated institutional capital.
The launch also fits a broader contest among banks to win institutional stablecoin custody and settlement business as regulators clarify the rules. Standard Chartered’s move puts it among the first global banks to offer custody for a major stablecoin issued on a public ledger, a segment where digital-asset-native custodians have so far led.
What Happens Next
Standard Chartered said further details on the LMAX collateral integration will be announced as implementation progresses, and that the agreed capabilities depend on final documentation, successful testing and regulatory and internal approvals. Until then, the live custody service is the concrete, available change, while the collateral arrangement remains a forward-looking plan. The earlier UAE spot-trading rollout gives a sense of how the bank has sequenced its crypto launches, starting with custody and execution before layering on collateral services.
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