Ripple has named Chipper Cash as a launch partner to bring its USD-backed stablecoin, Ripple USD (RLUSD), to customers and institutions across Africa. The announcement marks a fresh phase of the companies’ collaboration around cross-border payments. Ripple also confirmed parallel African distribution through VALR and Yellow Card, widening access to RLUSD on day one.
What RLUSD Is
RLUSD is a fiat-backed stablecoin designed to maintain a 1:1 peg with the U.S. dollar and operate on enterprise rails. It is issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company, a New York Department of Financial Services-chartered limited purpose trust company within Ripple’s corporate structure. That regulatory setup is intended to emphasize segregation of reserves, fiduciary oversight, and auditability for institutional users.
The Chipper Cash Partnership
Chipper Cash will act as a key African launch partner, integrating RLUSD for retail and enterprise clients and aligning it with the company’s cross-border payments footprint. The move extends an earlier Ripple–Chipper tie-up aimed at faster, cheaper corridors into African markets, now augmented with a dollar-denominated stablecoin option. Executives from both firms framed the rollout as a practical step toward institutional-grade digital settlement in everyday financial flows.
How Distribution Will Work
Ripple says RLUSD will be available through its partners to support pay-ins, pay-outs, and internal treasury moves, with settlement occurring on chain. The company positions the asset as a reliable bridge between local fiat currencies and crypto liquidity, including for off-ramp and on-ramp workflows. In parallel, Ripple is leaning on partners’ compliance stacks and regional licensing to localize access while maintaining unified stablecoin standards.
Enterprise Use Cases
The firms highlight several initial applications, including instant settlement of cross-border payments and liquidity for remittance and treasury operations. Additional use cases include integrating with DeFi protocols and posting RLUSD as collateral when trading tokenized real-world assets such as treasuries and commodities. The shared message is utility first, with an emphasis on operational reliability over speculative use.
Compliance, Controls, and Payments Integration
Ripple underscores a compliance-first design that pairs attestations and trust-company governance with the company’s long-running work with regulators. RLUSD has also been enabled inside Ripple Payments, broadening the set of stablecoins available to financial institutions using Ripple’s cross-border solution. The intent is to reduce frictions in settlement while preserving audit trails and adherence to regulated-entity standards.
Market Traction and Scale
RLUSD’s footprint has expanded materially since late 2024, with market capitalization hovering around the $700 million mark this week. Independent trackers show live data near that level, reflecting growing institutional and platform support as distribution channels expand. Media coverage today likewise cites the $700 million milestone as Ripple opens new African corridors.
Competitive and Regional Context
Africa’s remittance and B2B payment flows have made the continent an early proving ground for regulated stablecoins that can complement or compete with existing options. By launching with Chipper Cash and simultaneously aligning with VALR and Yellow Card, Ripple is seeding liquidity and access across multiple rails rather than a single walled garden. Observers see the strategy as a bid to position RLUSD as a compliant alternative in markets long dominated by unregulated or lightly supervised stablecoins.
Taken together, Chipper Cash’s launch of RLUSD in Africa and Ripple’s multi-partner rollout signal a push to make stablecoin settlement routine for institutions and consumers. The combination of trust-company issuance, payments-network integration, and regional distribution partners gives RLUSD a credible pathway to scale. Execution will now hinge on corridor performance, regulatory follow-through, and whether users view RLUSD as the safest dollar on chain in African markets.