Ripple and SettleMint have announced a strategic partnership to integrate Ripple Custody into SettleMint’s Digital Asset Lifecycle Platform (DALP). This collaboration aims to provide regulated financial institutions with a unified system for the custody, issuance, and management of tokenized assets throughout their lifecycle.
The integrated offering has launched in Asia, with plans to expand to other markets based on institutional demand. The partnership targets banks, market infrastructure operators, and sovereign entities, consolidating functions such as compliance, settlement, and servicing with custody and issuance. This approach seeks to enable institutions to reduce reliance on separate vendors for each function.
According to Fiona Murray, Managing Director, Asia Pacific at Ripple, financial institutions across Asia Pacific are actively engaging with digital assets and are seeking integrated solutions. “They are asking how to do more without stitching together separate solutions for custody, issuance and governance,” Murray stated.
Market Context and Projections
The joint announcement references a Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report from May 2026, titled “The Future of Digital Assets.” This report projects that tokenized real-world assets could reach $88 trillion by 2035, describing the shift toward digital assets as a fundamental restructuring of financial infrastructure. BCG also estimates that banks failing to adapt to this shift could see profits fall by as much as 30% over the same horizon.
Ripple’s Custody Expansion
Ripple’s custody services have been developed through a series of transactions and acquisitions, with the company having invested approximately $4 billion in cumulative M&A and corporate venture spending on crypto infrastructure. Recent additions to Ripple’s capabilities include partnerships with Securosys and Figment, an integration with compliance analytics firm Chainalysis, and the acquisition of wallet infrastructure provider Palisade, which enhanced its MPC-based key sharding and multi-chain support.
SettleMint’s Platform Reach
SettleMint, headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, with offices in the UAE, Singapore, and Japan, provides the lifecycle management component. The company states that its DALP is currently in production and pre-production deployments across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific for banks, market operators, and governments.
“Global capital markets are moving fully on-chain, and that shift only works when digital asset custody and lifecycle management operate as one system rather than two,” said Adam Popat, CEO of SettleMint.
The partnership’s offering includes support for assets such as RLUSD, Ripple’s stablecoin, and XRP. In March, Ripple piloted RLUSD in Singapore’s central bank sandbox with supply chain finance firm Unloq. Additionally, Ripple’s XRP Ledger was utilized in a cross-border pilot with JPMorgan, Mastercard, and Ondo Finance, which reportedly settled tokenized US Treasuries in under five seconds.
While the offering has commenced in Asia, the exact timeline for its extension to other markets remains an uncertainty. The full impact of banks failing to adapt to digital assets on their profits is also subject to estimation, as is the complete scope of SettleMint’s DALP deployments across all regions.
Why This Matters
This partnership addresses the growing need for integrated digital asset management solutions within the financial sector. As highlighted by Boston Consulting Group, the market for tokenized real-world assets is projected to reach $88 trillion by 2035, indicating a significant shift in financial infrastructure. Financial institutions that fail to adapt to this evolving landscape could face substantial profit reductions, underscoring the importance of solutions like the one offered by Ripple and SettleMint.
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