Ripple is closing bank deals at a pace the crypto industry has never seen from a single company. There’s been ten major partnerships so far this year, including Deutsche Bank, Société Générale, JPMorgan, Mastercard, and Convera. What’s more is that many of these financial institutions collectively manage more money than most countries produce in a year.
But the interesting twist about Ripple’s dea;ls is that XRP holders don’t benefit from the wins. XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) is down around 41% since January, with almost every single one of those deals followed by the price falling. If you hold XRP and you’re trying to understand why none of this is showing up in the price, here is the honest answer.
Does Ripple’s Deals Matter for XRP?
Ripple’s product lineup has three layers. There’s RippleNet, the messaging infrastructure that connects banks. Then, there’s RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin. Coming in last is Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service, the only product that actually uses XRP as a settlement asset, converting one currency into XRP, moving it across the XRP Ledger in seconds, and converting it into the destination currency on arrival.
When a Ripple deal uses ODL, XRP gets bought and sold with every transaction, but when a deal uses RippleNet or RLUSD instead, XRP doesn’t move.
Of the ten major deals, three—Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan, and Mastercard—only used Ripple’s enterprise software, with no XRPL involvement. The other seven used XRPL, but all settled in RLUSD—including the cross-border tokenized Treasury transaction that settled in under five seconds. XRP’s role in that deal was to pay the network fee, which was a fraction of a cent.
Lastly, Convera’s $190 billion payment network runs on what Ripple calls a “stablecoin sandwich”—fiat in, RLUSD in the middle, and fiat out. Across all ten deals, Ripple’s infrastructure benefited greatly, while XRP didn’t benefit from any of them.
Why Hasn’t the XRP Price Moved Despite All the Good News?
The short answer is that Ripple gave institutions a way to use its network without requiring XRP, and institutions took it. RLUSD is Ripple’s own stablecoin, launched in late 2024 and now at a $1.5 billion market cap. It holds a $1 peg, which means banks can settle cross-border payments through Ripple’s infrastructure without taking on any price risk—exactly what treasury departments want.
When the choice is between settling in a volatile token and settling in a dollar-pegged stablecoin that does the same job, every company picks the stablecoin. Ripple built RLUSD to attract institutions and it worked. That created a problem where every institution that settles in RLUSD doesn’t need to use XRP at all.
Additionally, Ripple unlocks up to 1 billion XRP from escrow every month, a release schedule set in 2017. Of that volume, Ripple typically uses 100 to 300 million XRP for operations, institutional sales, and ODL liquidity, then relocks the rest. Even in months where operational use is high, hundreds of millions of fresh XRP tokens enter potential circulation.
All that fresh XRP eventually gets sold into the market, which absorbs any buying thatRipple’s deals might bring in.
What Would Need to Change for XRP Holders to Benefit?
Three specific things need to happen before Ripple’s wins start showing up in the XRP price.
ODL Needs to Scale Into New Corridors
Every cross-border payment routed through ODL buys XRP on one end and sells it on the other, creating real transaction volume. However, ODL only handles a minority of Ripple’s total transaction volume.
The Middle East and Africa, regions where the UAE alone moves $50 billion in annual outbound remittances and Sub-Saharan Africa corridors carry the world’s highest fees at 8.78%, are exactly the corridors where ODL’s cost savings are most compelling. None of Ripple’s African partnerships use ODL yet. When they do, that’s when XRP demand from real payment volume starts compounding.
The CLARITY Act Must Pass
Federal law currently leaves XRP in a grey area for most U.S. institutional compliance teams. Even with the SEC lawsuit settled, pension funds and insurance companies won’t hold XRP at scale without a federal statute that explicitly classifies it as a commodity. This is why the CLARITY Act must be passed into law. The Senate Banking Committee completed its markup vote on May 14, 2026, advancing the bill with a 15-9 bipartisan vote.
If the bill reaches Trump’s desk before the White House’s July 4 deadline, the legal barrier disappears. Institutions that have been watching Ripple’s deals from the sidelines would get the green light to allocate directly to XRP.
Banks Must Start Mandating XRP Settlement
The most direct route to XRP price appreciation is for Ripple to require ODL, rather than RLUSD, as the settlement layer for specific corridors. As ODL scales and XRP’s commodity status is federally locked in, the economics of ODL—faster settlement, lower pre-funding costs, no trapped capital in foreign accounts—become harder for institutions to ignore.
Additionally, Trident Digital is building a $500 million corporate XRP treasury specifically to provide ODL liquidity for African corridors, with a phased rollout targeting mid-2026. When dedicated XRP liquidity pools operate in high-volume corridors, more partners switch from RLUSD to ODL because the liquidity is already in place.
Should XRP Holders Be Patient or Concerned?
We advocate for patience, but only if you understand exactly what you’re waiting for. Ripple signing more deals won’t move XRP’s price. What will move its price is banks and large institutions buying and selling XRP through ODL, but most are choosing RLUSD instead.
For that to change, the CLARITY Act must be passed into law to remove the legal reason institutions avoid XRP, and ODL liquidity must scale into new corridors. The CLARITY Act just cleared the Senate Banking Committee, and Trident Digital’s $500 million XRP liquidity pool is targeting African corridors by mid-2026. These are the two developments to watch. Until then, treat every Ripple bank deal as good news for the company and neutral news for the token.
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