Leading XRPL decentralized exchange First Ledger claims that major financial institutions such as Mastercard and WebBank use XRP.
First Ledger’s claims come weeks after Ripple announced a partnership with Mastercard, WebBank, and Gemini to pilot RLUSD stablecoin payments on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). This initiative aims to test how a regulated stablecoin like RLUSD can settle traditional card payments with XRPL.
How Mastercard, Gemini, Ripple, and WebBank use XRP
While Ripple’s announcement focused on using RLUSD for payments, Fast Ledger believes all parties, including Ripple, Mastercard, Gemini, and Webbank, will use XRP.
This perspective stems from the basic design of the XRP Ledger. As the native asset of XRP, all transaction fees are paid in tokens, supporting the movement of value across the network.
Therefore, any activity on XRPL, including RLUSD payments, requires XRP to pay network fees and maintain the ledger operations. So, while the pilot highlights RLUSD as a payment asset, Mastercard, Gemini, Ripple, and WebBank essentially interact with and effectively “spend” XRP simply by executing transactions on the blockchain.
Previous efforts with XRP
In particular, Ripple has always leveraged XRP in its on-demand liquidity (ODL) solutions, rebranded as Ripple Payments, and has long relied on XRP as a bridge asset for cross-border payments.
Financial institutions process billions of dollars through this system, and Tranglo alone is reported to have over $1 billion in XRP-facilitated transactions by 2023.
Additionally, Gemini, WebBank, Mastercard, and Ripple collaborated on another initiative in early August, introducing the Gemini XRP credit card. Issued by WebBank and powered by Mastercard’s global payments network, the card allows users to make purchases directly with XRP and earn cashback rewards.
These entities are currently partnering on another venture: testing RLUSD payments on the XRP Ledger, an initiative that First Ledger believes will bring XRP back to light.