Ripple (XRP)

What Is XRP?

Ripple is a fintech company building payment infrastructure for the global financial system. Founded in 2012, Ripple sells payment software to banks and payment companies; it reported passing 300 RippleNet customers as of November 2019 (Ripple, Nov 7, 2019). Many of those customers use Ripple's messaging software without using XRP. XRP is the native digital asset of the XRP Ledger (XRPL), an open-source, decentralized blockchain that settles transactions in 3–5 seconds with near-zero fees.

Ripple's cross-border payment product (formerly called On-Demand Liquidity, or ODL) can use XRP as a bridge asset: instead of keeping pre-funded accounts in each destination currency, a payment provider converts from one currency to XRP and back to another in seconds.

ISO 20022 is the messaging standard for financial institutions that Swift moved cross-border payment messages to in November 2025. It standardizes bank messages, not assets, so a token isn't "ISO 20022 compliant." Ripple is a member of the ISO 20022 Registration Management Group (iso20022.org member list), and its payment software can exchange ISO 20022 messages with bank systems. More in our ISO 20022 explainer.