XRP News: Ripple Now Lets Companies Earn Returns on RLUSD Around the Clock. What Role Does XRP Play?
Ripple just gave corporate treasurers a new way to earn returns on idle cash around the clock, but the announcement left out the rate, the legal structure, and any mention of XRP.
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Ripple has rolled out a new Treasury feature that lets eligible corporate clients earn ongoing returns on Ripple USD (CRYPTO: RLUSD), its dollar-backed stablecoin. Ripple announced this new option, called 24/7 Returns, at Swell 2026, alongside advancements in AI tools that build on the AI agents Ripple introduced in September.
The announcement said RLUSD held in a Ripple wallet qualifies for the program, but it did not disclose the return rate or its source. Notably, the release did not mention XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) or the XRP Ledger.
After the news, XRP’s price saw minimal movement, trading at $1.28 —down 1% over the last 24 hours, 12.9% for October, and 51% over the past year.
Ripple Treasury’s 24/7 Returns Targets Idle Cash
Ripple Treasury is a treasury management system that helps a company’s finance team track cash across various bank accounts, forecast needs, and manage payments. Ripple built this system on GTreasury, a company Ripple acquired for about $1 billion in 2025, and launched the platform on April 1.
The October 26 upgrade consists of two main components. First, a new orchestration layer integrates with GSmart, Ripple Treasury’s AI tools, to automate cash positioning, forecasting, reconciliation, liquidity, and payments. Then comes the 24/7 Returns feature, which rewards eligible companies for cash that sits idle overnight, on weekends, and during holidays when banks are closed.
Some of Ripple Treasury’s customers include American Airlines (NASDAQ: AAL | AAL Price Prediction), Trax, Christian Louboutin, Subway, Adecco, and Kingfisher. However, using Ripple’s software does not automatically mean these companies will park their cash in RLUSD.
Ripple backed its pitch with a 2026 liquidity survey from the Association for Financial Professionals, which found that 46% of organizations increased their U.S. cash balances over the past year. Additionally, 86% of treasury professionals said they would prefer real-time money market funds if they complied with their investment policies.
Since companies typically place short-term cash in money market funds, Ripple is positioning RLUSD as an alternative for earning returns during banking downtime.
Ripple Hasn’t Said What 24/7 Returns Pay
The GENIUS Act, a federal law regarding stablecoins, prohibits issuers from offering interest or yield merely for holding a payment stablecoin. While Ripple is responsible for issuing RLUSD, the announcement failed to clarify how returns would work or specify a rate, making it impossible for treasury managers to compare 24/7 Returns with traditional money market funds.
The law’s restrictions make the structure of any stablecoin reward the first concern for interested parties.
Because Ripple is a private company and does not publicly disclose revenue figures, it is unclear how much income it generates from Ripple Payments, custody services, Ripple Treasury, RLUSD, or Ripple Prime, which targets institutional clients.
Like other dollar stablecoin issuers, Ripple likely derives most of its RLUSD income from the interest earned on the reserves backing each token. A trust company regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services oversees these reserves, and Ripple has received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to operate a national trust bank.
Ripple also faces stiff competition for corporate cash. Circle (NYSE: CRCL) issues USD Coin (CRYPTO: USDC), a larger regulated dollar stablecoin with a market cap of about $71 billion, while Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) already offers rewards to customers holding USDC. Meanwhile, RLUSD ranks 41st among cryptocurrencies, with a market cap of about $2.5 billion.
Ripple’s advantage lies in its existing distribution. Finance teams already use its software, and a U.S. bank recently integrated RLUSD into its core systems, allowing Ripple to present RLUSD directly to finance teams without requiring them to open an exchange account.
What Role Does XRP Play in Ripple Treasury’s 24/7 Returns?
From what we can gather, XRP plays no direct role in the newly launched product. Ripple is enhancing its software product and establishing a sales channel for RLUSD, while XRP seems to gain no direct benefit from this development.
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Sam Daodu is a crypto analyst and the editor of 24/7 Wall St.'s Crypto Desk, where he covers Bitcoin, XRP, Ethereum, Solana and the altcoins investors search for most. His work focuses on price levels, spot ETF flows, on-chain data and the regulatory decisions that move crypto markets, written so a first-time buyer and a seasoned trader can both use it.
Sam has written about crypto professionally since 2019 and has published more than 2,000 articles. Before joining 24/7 Wall St., he wrote for crypto media outlets and Web3 companies and ghostwrote for crypto founders and token launches. His analysis is syndicated on Yahoo Finance, MSN and AOL and has been cited by other crypto news sites. He also founded MacLabs Marketing, a content and personal branding agency for crypto founders and executives.
When he isn't reading charts, Sam is usually at the gym or watching One Piece, a series he maintains has better tokenomics than most altcoins.
