On Aug. 18, Ripple deepened its push into traditional finance, securing a South Korean banking deal as its prime brokerage raised $275 million.
The crypto payment company revealed that South Korea’s Jeonbuk Bank became the country’s first regional lender to deploy Ripple Payments for cross-border business transfers, replacing SWIFT-based correspondent-bank transfers that can take days to reach recipients.
Hours later, Ripple Prime closed an upsized $275 million private placement of senior unsecured notes to support its expanding US business.
Together, the announcements show Ripple pushing deeper into two parts of financial infrastructure: cross-border payments for banks and the clearing, financing and brokerage services used by institutional investors.
Korea becomes a multi-product foothold for Ripple
Jeonbuk adds payments to a Korean expansion that already reaches digital-asset custody and tokenized securities.
The bank will use Ripple Payments to provide near real-time, around-the-clock settlement for customers including import-export companies, technology startups and online content creators. Ripple said the service can complete transfers in seconds to minutes, compared with cross-border correspondent-bank transactions that can take longer to reach recipients.
Fiona Murray, Ripple’s managing director for Asia Pacific, said the agreement reflects “growing momentum” across South Korea’s institutional financial sector.
Notably, the deal follows two other Korean partnerships this year. Kyobo Life Insurance, the country’s largest life insurer, is exploring on-chain settlement of South Korean government bonds with Ripple, while internet-only lender Kbank is deploying wallet infrastructure through Ripple Custody.
These projects give Ripple relationships spanning payments, custody, wallets and tokenized securities in one of Asia’s most active digital-asset markets.
Jeonbuk also extends the reach of a payments business Ripple says has processed more than $100 billion across more than 60 markets. The platform can handle settlement using fiat currencies or stablecoins, including RLUSD, USDC and USDT, through a single integration.
That gives Jeonbuk an alternative to cross-border transfers that rely on multiple correspondent banks, while broadening Ripple’s push to sell financial institutions more than a single blockchain product.
Ripple Prime taps debt markets for another $275 million
Ripple is also putting more capital behind the institutional trading business it acquired for $1.25 billion last year.
Ripple Prime, formerly Hidden Road, closed an upsized $275 million private placement of senior unsecured notes after attracting institutional investors across major financial markets. The notes received a BBB investment-grade rating from KBRA.
Proceeds will be used for working capital and general corporate purposes within a regulated entity as the brokerage expands its US operations, Ripple said.
The financing gives Ripple Prime another source of capital for a business whose growth depends partly on the balance-sheet capacity needed to clear trades and provide financing to institutional customers.
Ripple Prime clears more than $3 trillion annually across markets and serves more than 300 institutional customers. Its platform spans digital assets, foreign exchange, precious metals, exchange-traded derivatives, over-the-counter swaps and fixed-income repo.
The notes also follow a $200 million debt facility secured from Neuberger Specialty Finance in May. That facility was designed to increase Ripple Prime’s lending capacity and provide additional margin financing to customers across traditional and digital markets. Ripple said at the time that the prime brokerage’s revenue had tripled year over year since the acquisition.
Ripple’s purchase of Hidden Road was designed to add clearing, execution, and financing to a business historically identified with cross-border payments.
The acquisition also created connections to Ripple’s crypto infrastructure, with RLUSD used as collateral across some prime brokerage products and plans to migrate parts of post-trade activity onto the XRP Ledger.
The Jeonbuk and Ripple Prime announcements therefore show the company expanding on separate fronts at the same time: building distribution among banks while adding capital to the institutional brokerage business behind its push into traditional markets.
Ripple’s expansion does not automatically translate into XRP demand
Still, that broader institutional footprint has yet to produce a comparable lift for XRP.
Data from CryptoSlate shows that the token fell to about $0.98 during the last 24 hours, its lowest level since November 2024, before recovering above the closely watched $1 threshold. XRP traded around $1.06 later in the day.
The price action reflects a distinction between growth in Ripple’s businesses and direct demand for the cryptocurrency associated with the company.
Ripple has not disclosed which settlement assets Jeonbuk will use. Ripple Payments can process transactions using fiat currencies and multiple stablecoins, so the bank’s deployment does not mean XRP will be bought or used for those transfers.
Ripple Prime creates a similar distinction. The brokerage provides exposure to digital assets including XRP and is expected to use the XRPL for parts of its post-trade infrastructure, but the $275 million financing was raised for working capital and general corporate purposes rather than purchases of XRP.
Traders, meanwhile, are putting more capital into leveraged XRP positions as the token tests the $1 region.
CryptoQuant data shows XRP open interest on Binance has climbed to about $461.3 million from about $360 million at the beginning of August, reaching its highest level in two months.
The increase indicates that more capital is tied up in outstanding XRP derivatives contracts, but open interest alone does not reveal whether those positions are predominantly bullish or bearish.
That leaves the buildup increasingly sensitive to what XRP does around $1. A sustained recovery accompanied by rising open interest could signal fresh positions entering alongside higher prices.
However, continued weakness while open interest remains elevated would raise liquidation risk for leveraged positions and could trigger sharper price swings.
The setup leaves Ripple and XRP moving on increasingly separate tracks. Ripple is adding banks, institutional products and conventional financing, while XRP traders are committing more leveraged capital around one of the token’s most closely watched price levels.
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