Ripple Trust Bank Charter and Coinbase Rollout Strengthen RLUSD’s Regulated-Dollar Bid
Oct. 29, 2026 • Article • Digital Assets
Ripple’s final federal trust bank charter, a Moody’s investment-grade rating for RLUSD and a planned expansion of the stablecoin’s availability on Coinbase have strengthened its position as a regulated digital dollar. Coinbase said Global Exchange access, including eligibility to use RLUSD as trading collateral, will follow its initial retail and prime rollout. Moody’s assigned RLUSD an A2 long-term deposit rating and a P-1 short-term rating, the first investment-grade rating it has given a stablecoin.
The distinctions behind those developments matter. Ripple National Trust Bank manages RLUSD’s reserve collateral, but the legal issuer remains Standard Custody & Trust Company, a New York-regulated Ripple subsidiary. The national trust bank is uninsured and cannot take commercial retail deposits or extend credit. Moody’s also noted that holders do not currently own the underlying reserves directly and that statutory bankruptcy protections depend on implementation of the GENIUS Act, whose rules take effect in January 2027.
Ripple’s federal trust bank approval, a Moody’s investment-grade rating and a broader Coinbase distribution plan have advanced the case for its dollar stablecoin, RLUSD. Together, the developments address oversight, credit assessment and market access. They do not, however, make RLUSD a bank deposit or resolve every question about holders’ rights to its reserves.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency gave final approval to Ripple National Trust Bank on October 26, 2026, according to the OCC and Ripple. Moody’s subsequently assigned RLUSD an A2 long-term deposit rating and a P-1 short-term deposit rating, marking the first time the agency had assigned an investment-grade rating to a stablecoin. Coinbase has confirmed that access for Global Exchange customers, including eligibility to use RLUSD as trading collateral, will follow an initial retail and prime rollout.
What Ripple’s trust bank charter covers
Ripple National Trust Bank operates under OCC charter #25364 as an uninsured national trust institution. Its role in the RLUSD structure is to act as reserve collateral trustee and manager. It is not the stablecoin’s legal issuer: that remains Standard Custody & Trust Company, a Ripple-owned limited-purpose trust company regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services.
That division of responsibilities is important. A federal trust bank charter gives Ripple a federally supervised institution for managing reserve collateral, but it does not turn RLUSD into an FDIC-insured deposit. The bank cannot accept commercial retail deposits or extend credit, and it has no FDIC insurance coverage.
Ripple is the second major stablecoin operator to receive final federal trust bank approval after Circle’s First National Digital Currency Bank received approval in July 2026. The charter adds a federal supervisory dimension to Ripple’s arrangements without displacing the New York-regulated entity that issues RLUSD.
Rating and reserves: strengths and limits
RLUSD’s reserve structure targets 103% coverage, with assets invested predominantly in short-duration U.S. government securities and cash. BNY is the primary custodian. The target describes the intended reserve coverage; it should not be read as a guarantee that holders have direct ownership of those assets.
That distinction features in Moody’s analysis. Despite its investment-grade ratings, the agency noted that RLUSD holders currently lack direct ownership of the underlying reserves. It also said the issuer is not yet statutory bankruptcy-remote, pending implementation of the GENIUS Act. The ratings therefore provide an external assessment of RLUSD while leaving the legal treatment of reserves a material consideration for users.
On October 21, the OCC finalized rules implementing the GENIUS Act, which take effect on January 18, 2027. The framework establishes rules for permitted payment stablecoin issuers and excludes required reserves from an issuer’s bankruptcy estate. Until those provisions take effect, the distinction identified by Moody’s remains relevant to any comparison between RLUSD and other forms of regulated dollar holdings.
Distribution expands beyond Ripple
Coinbase’s planned Global Exchange availability could extend RLUSD’s use beyond purchases and holdings by making it eligible as trading collateral. Coinbase said that step would follow the initial retail and prime rollout; the provided information does not establish that Global Exchange collateral use is already live. Distribution is central to whether a stablecoin becomes useful across trading and settlement, rather than remaining confined to its issuer’s own services.
The Coinbase relationship also sits alongside an existing commercial arrangement in the stablecoin market: Coinbase derives a significant share of its recurring subscription and services revenue from a reserve-interest-sharing agreement with Circle tied to USDC. The research does not establish that RLUSD will displace that arrangement, and wider availability alone does not demonstrate a shift in customer adoption.
Other institutions are extending RLUSD’s potential uses. At Ripple Swell 2026, Robinhood announced an expanded partnership with Ripple to settle institutional trades in RLUSD on the XRP Ledger and launch the stablecoin on Robinhood Chain. BNY separately announced that it would expand its Ripple partnership to custody RLUSD and XRP on its Digital Asset Custody platform, while exploring tokenized trade finance on the XRP Ledger. The trade-finance work remains exploratory.
Ripple also said at Swell that it expected an annualized product revenue run rate of $900 million by year-end 2026 across payments, custody, prime brokerage and stablecoin operations. That is a company-wide projection across several products, not a reported RLUSD revenue figure. For RLUSD, the test ahead is whether new channels translate into sustained use as the federal stablecoin rules take effect—and whether the resulting protections address the reserve-rights limitations Moody’s identified.
Ripple’s final federal trust bank charter, a Moody’s investment-grade rating for RLUSD and a planned expansion of the stablecoin’s availability on Coinbase have strengthened its position as a regulated digital dollar. Coinbase said Global Exchange access, including eligibility to use RLUSD as trading collateral, will follow its initial retail and prime rollout. Moody’s assigned RLUSD an A2 long-term deposit rating and a P-1 short-term rating, the first investment-grade rating it has given a stablecoin. The distinctions behind those developments matter. Ripple National Trust Bank manages RLUSD’s reserve collateral, but the legal issuer remains Standard Custody & Trust Company, a New York-regulated Ripple subsidiary. The national trust bank is uninsured and cannot take commercial retail deposits or extend credit. Moody’s also noted that holders do not currently own the underlying reserves directly and that statutory bankruptcy protections depend on implementation of the GENIUS Act, whose rules take effect in January 2027.
Ramp partnered with Stripe and Bridge in July 2026 to deploy stablecoin rails for business bill payments and yield-bearing stablecoin accounts funded through standard fiat bank accounts. The arrangement shows how stablecoins can be incorporated into familiar payment workflows without requiring businesses to fund every transaction with digital assets. The economics depend on more than the cost of moving a token on-chain. Stripe charges merchants 1.5% for stablecoin checkout transactions, versus its standard card-processing fee of 2.9% plus $0.30; neither figure establishes the price of Ramp’s bill-payment service. Businesses receiving fiat may also face foreign-exchange and off-ramp costs, typically 0.3% to 2.0% when converting into local banking systems. Domestic clearing networks and compliance checks remain part of end-to-end delivery. Bridge’s issuance and transfer tools, alongside its conditional U.S. trust-bank approval, illustrate the infrastructure behind those payments—but not the elimination of every payment cost.
StraitsX has opened onboarding for digital payment token providers across more than 100 markets through an expanded card-issuing architecture developed with Visa. Integration documentation published on 26 October 2026 describes a multi-BIN model that combines issuing sponsorship, transaction authorization, compliance screening and fiat clearing. The approach lets participating providers build stablecoin-backed card products while merchants continue to receive conventional fiat payments through Visa’s network. StraitsX says its card gross transaction value rose 40-fold year on year from Q4 2024 to Q4 2025, while cards issued across Asia increased 83-fold. On-chain issuer telemetry recorded monthly card transaction volume of $310 million to $438 million through October 2026. The company’s stated $6 billion annualized card transaction figure is distinct from its cumulative $70 billion in processed stablecoin volume. StraitsX and Visa have also scheduled demonstrations of agentic payments for November 2026.
ACI Worldwide and Circle announced a pilot on October 27, 2026, involving USDC and connectivity to Colombia’s Bre-B instant payments system. The integration runs through ACI Connetic, a payments orchestration platform, rather than embedding USDC in Bre-B’s central infrastructure. There is no indication that Colombia’s central bank has adopted USDC as a settlement asset for the national network. The distinction matters because ACI also supplies technology for Bre-B’s central directory and real-time clearing engine. Bre-B launched in October 2025 and handled more than 500 million transactions within five months. Connetic is designed to bring traditional payment rails and digital asset networks together without requiring banks to replace legacy core ledgers. ACI says the platform can support other digital assets and liquidity providers, so the pilot does not make USDC its exclusive option. The arrangement tests a vendor-level connection alongside an established public payment system, not a change to that system’s settlement rules.
Ripple received final approval on 26 October 2026 for Ripple National Trust Bank, giving it a federally chartered institution for fiduciary and custody activities. The charter does not authorize commercial deposits or loans, and it does not transfer issuance of Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin to the new bank. RLUSD issuance remains with Standard Custody & Trust Company under New York State Department of Financial Services supervision. BNY is the primary custodian of the dollar deposits and U.S. Treasury reserves backing the stablecoin. The arrangement separates a federal custody role from state-supervised issuance. It also comes as the OCC implements the GENIUS Act’s stablecoin rules and faces a lawsuit from the Independent Community Bankers of America challenging its authority to grant national trust charters to crypto firms. Ripple has separately announced an expanded partnership with BNY and Robinhood focused on institutional custody capabilities and exploring tokenized trade finance.
Stripe confirmed in October 2026 that it plans to expand its Bridge- and Visa-powered stablecoin card issuing program from 18 initial countries to more than 100 by the end of the year. The planned rollout spans Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. It follows Stripe’s February 2025 acquisition of Bridge, whose APIs connect stablecoin transfers with fiat accounts and bank payouts. Stripe has also made Open USD available to businesses in Stripe Financial Accounts alongside USDC. Its broader stablecoin infrastructure combines Bridge’s conversion tools with Stripe’s existing payment and treasury network and embedded wallets from Privy. Lead Bank supports the card program as a financial institution partner and BIN sponsor. A separate deployment by Ramp uses Bridge APIs and Privy wallets to let businesses pay vendors in stablecoins using funds from fiat bank accounts. Together, the developments show how Stripe is assembling stablecoin services for business payments, while the planned geographic expansion remains unfinished.