Ripple’s USD-Backed Stablecoin RLUSD Arrives in Africa

Ripple, the leading provider of digital asset infrastructure for financial institutions, is making its enterprise-grade, USD-backed stablecoin Ripple USD (RLUSD) available to institutions in Africa through three new partnerships with Chipper Cash, VALR and Yellow Card.

RLUSD was created with trust, utility, and compliance at its core, and backed by Ripple’s many years of experience working with both crypto and traditional finance. Since its launch in late 2024, RLUSD has experienced strong global adoption, exceeding $700 million in market capitalization, underlining demand for a compliance-first USD-backed stablecoin.

RLUSD sets the standard for stablecoins, combining innovative functionality with the regulatory rigor and credibility of an NYDFS-issued New York limited purpose trust company, further highlighting Ripple’s leadership in fostering trust and transparency in digital assets.

“RLUSD has quickly become established in enterprise financial use cases, from payments to tokenization to collateral in both crypto and traditional trading markets. We’re seeing demand for RLUSD from our customers and other key institutional players globally and are excited to now begin distribution in Africa through our local partners,” said Jack McDonald, SVP of Stablecoins at Ripple. “We also recently enabled RLUSD in Ripple Payments, extending the breadth of stablecoins available in our cross-border payments solution to better serve our customers in Africa and worldwide.”

“After establishing our partnership with Ripple earlier this year to support faster, cheaper, more efficient cross-border payments into Africa, we were keen to make RLUSD available to our clients as soon as possible,” said Ham Serunjogi, Co-Founder & CEO at Chipper Cash. “RLUSD is uniquely positioned to drive institutional use of blockchain technology across Africa and broader global markets, including through cross-border payments.”

“As the largest crypto exchange in Africa, VALR is committed to providing our customers with access to compliant and high-quality digital assets,” said Farzam Ehsani, Co-Founder and CEO of VALR. “The listing of RLUSD reflects our broader strategy to support trusted stablecoin options that serve the evolving needs of both institutional and retail clients seeking a reliable digital dollar for a growing range of use cases.”

“This listing reinforces our commitment to providing the most reliable and compliant payment infrastructure across Africa and the emerging markets,” said Chris Maurice, CEO and Co-Founder at Yellow Card. “Our customers demand access to stable digital assets that are useful for secure cross-border payments and treasury management. Offering a regulatory-compliant stablecoin like RLUSD is a natural step in our mission to deliver trusted, enterprise-grade solutions.”

RLUSD is ideal for a number of enterprise financial use cases including facilitating instant settlement of cross-border payments; accessing liquidity for remittance and treasury operations; integrating with decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols; reliably bridging between fiat currencies and the crypto ecosystem, ensuring seamless and efficient transitions when entering (on-ramping) or exiting (off-ramping) the crypto space; and providing collateralization for trading tokenized real-world assets such as commodities, securities, and treasuries onchain.

In addition to RLUSD being made available in Africa through these new partnerships, Ripple’s stablecoin is being used to underpin extreme weather event relief pilot projects led by Mercy Corps Ventures in Kenya. In the first project, it serves as drought insurance for farmers, held in escrow and released via smart contracts if satellite data confirms a drought is likely to occur. A second pilot project will utilize RLUSD to back a parametric rainfall insurance solution, delivering similar support during periods of extreme rainfall.

Ripple continues to work with top-tier partners around the world to make RLUSD globally available. In addition to the three new African partners, RLUSD is also available through Bitso, Bitstamp, Bullish, CoinMENA, Independent Reserve, Gemini, Kraken, LMAX, Mercado Bitcoin, and Uphold ensuring access and availability across most of the world.