Ripple has made strategic investments in ZILO and Licuido, two UK-based firms, to accelerate its tokenized capital markets strategy. The deals aim to strengthen regulated fund issuance, settlement, trading, custody, and collateral mobility on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) and Ripple’s institutional infrastructure.
Ripple Expands Regulated Fund Infrastructure
ZILO specializes in transfer agency and fund administration systems for asset managers, wealth firms, and custodians. Its technology creates regulated digital ownership records for investors holding tokenized fund shares. The company recently announced raising $58.7 million in total equity funding. Ripple expects ZILO’s systems to support the creation and management of tokenized share classes on XRPL.
Licuido operates an investment platform regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). It facilitates the issuance, distribution, trading, and collateral use of traditional financial assets in digital form. Together, the two companies cover the full lifecycle of a tokenized fund, including investor recordkeeping, issuance, distribution, liquidity, settlement, and collateral movement.
Nigel Khakoo, Ripple’s senior vice president for trading and markets, highlighted the importance of these investments: “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.” He added, “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.”
Tokenized Funds Move Toward XRPL
Ripple plans to integrate both companies’ services with its broader institutional infrastructure. This integration would allow financial firms to issue assets, hold them in custody, transfer ownership, and use them as collateral seamlessly. The model aims to reduce idle collateral in traditional fund structures, where newly issued fund units often face delays before becoming available for trading or financing.
Ripple wants tokenized funds to be usable immediately upon issuance, connecting fund administration records with trading, custody, payments, and collateral systems through XRPL. This follows Ripple’s partnership with Aviva Investors, which announced plans in February to develop tokenized fund structures on XRPL. The ledger provides built-in tools for asset issuance, trading, escrow, and regulated financial activity.
Additionally, Ripple recently launched Ripple Mint, a platform for institutional asset issuance and management. It supports the creation, redemption, and administration of tokenized securities, stablecoins, fund units, bonds, and other assets.
RLUSD Supports Onchain Settlement
RLUSD, Ripple’s stablecoin, is expected to serve as the cash side of transactions involving tokenized assets. Ripple plans to use RLUSD for delivery-versus-payment settlement, where the asset and payment transfer simultaneously. This reduces settlement risk, which occurs when one side of a transaction completes before the other. RLUSD already supports liquidity and settlement services for several tokenized investment products.
XRP Price Remains Under Pressure
Despite these positive developments, XRP’s near-term price action remains weak. XRP traded near $1.06 after falling 1.05% over 24 hours. The token has broken below a late-July symmetrical triangle and trades under key moving averages. The 50-day exponential moving average near $1.09 now acts as immediate resistance. Key support sits between $1.05 and $1.06; a break below that could bring the psychological $1.00 level into play, while a move above $1.09 may ease selling pressure.
The broader regulatory environment also remains uncertain. The US Senate faces limited time to advance the CLARITY Act before its August recess, while lawmakers continue debating market structure, ethics, stablecoin, and consumer protection rules.