Ripple Backs ZILO and Licuido, Undisclosed Sums, to Wire RLUSD Into Fund Settlement

Ripple has made strategic investments in two capital-markets infrastructure firms, ZILO and Licuido, without disclosing the size of either check. The move deepens Ripple’s push to route regulated fund issuance, transfer-agency records and collateral trades through the XRP Ledger, with its RLUSD stablecoin positioned as the cash settlement leg.

The announcement, made public on August 3, builds on existing partnerships Ripple already had with both companies rather than starting fresh relationships. Neither Ripple nor the two firms disclosed valuation, stake size or funding terms.

What ZILO and Licuido actually do

ZILO builds transfer-agency and fund-administration technology, giving asset managers and custodians a regulated digital record for tokenized share classes — the paperwork layer that traditional fund managers need before they will touch on-chain instruments.

Licuido operates a platform regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority that supports issuance, distribution and trading of traditional assets, and lets those same assets be pledged as digital collateral. Together, the two cover the compliance and liquidity gaps that have kept many institutions on the sidelines of tokenized markets.

RLUSD as the cash leg

Ripple’s stated plan is to plug both firms’ capabilities into its XRP Ledger infrastructure so institutions can issue tokenized assets, hold them in custody, transfer them between investors, and post them as collateral without leaning on legacy back-office systems.

RLUSD, Ripple’s regulated stablecoin, is designed to serve as the cash component for delivery-versus-payment transactions, meaning the asset side and the payment side of a trade would settle simultaneously on XRPL rather than through separate, delayed legs.

Nigel Khakoo, SVP of Trading and Markets at Ripple, framed the deals as an early step in a longer roadmap: “ZILO and Licuido provide core capabilities that are essential to further scaling this shift: regulated digital transfer agency infrastructure and liquidity for issuance and collateral mobility. This is just the beginning of the journey, and we see a substantial opportunity to bring huge efficiencies to the investment sector over the next decade.”

Part of a broader tokenization build-out

The ZILO and Licuido deals land on the heels of Ripple’s launch of Ripple Mint last month, part of a wider effort to stitch together tokenization, payments, stablecoins and institutional trading under one platform built on XRPL.

For XRP holders and traders, the significance sits less in headline dollar figures — which remain undisclosed — and more in the direction of travel: Ripple is stacking regulated infrastructure partners around XRPL specifically to make it viable for tokenized fund issuance and collateral movement, use cases institutions have been reluctant to run on public blockchains until compliance rails like transfer agency and FCA-regulated collateral platforms exist.

Whether this translates into measurable on-chain volume or RLUSD settlement flow will depend on adoption by the asset managers and custodians ZILO and Licuido already serve — a metric worth watching in Ripple’s future disclosures rather than something this announcement itself quantifies.

Read more: XRP Ledger’s xrpld 3.3.0 Revives Two Bug-Pulled Features, Needs 80% Validator Vote

Sources

• theblock.co
• coingape.com
• cryptopotato.com