Which banks and asset managers have live tokenized asset projects on the XRP Ledger and what scale have they reached?
Executive summary
Major banks and asset managers have moved from pilots into live tokenization activity on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), with projects reported from HSBC, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank (pilot stage), BNY Mellon as custodian, DBS and Franklin Templeton in fund pilots, and Archax partnering with Ripple to scale issuance — collectively contributing to roughly $500–568 million of tokenized assets on XRPL by early 2026 while Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin reached about $1.3 billion across chains [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6].
1. Who the banks are and what they’re doing on XRPL
Global banks named in reporting include HSBC, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank and Zand Digital Bank in Dubai, each participating at different levels: HSBC has tokenization initiatives that reportedly use XRPL for real estate and money market fund tokenization (live projects), Standard Chartered moved from lab tests to live pilot transactions on ledger-based rails, Deutsche Bank continues DLT-based deposit and settlement pilots (mostly pilot/research stage rather than broad issuance), and Zand is the banking partner for Dubai’s government-backed real-estate tokenization sandbox using XRPL [1] [2] [3] [7].
2. Which asset managers and custodians are involved and how
Large asset managers are linked via product pilots and custody arrangements: Franklin Templeton and DBS ran a tokenized money market fund pilot on XRPL, BNY Mellon was reported as primary custodian for U.S. operations holding XRP and RLUSD for institutions, and BlackRock and VanEck appear indirectly through Securitize-linked products that tie RLUSD to tokenized offerings — all indicating asset-management and custody plumbing being tested or deployed around XRPL tokenized products [2] [6].
3. Scale: how much is on-chain and the stated targets
Multiple outlets converge on a similar scale: XRPL tokenized assets grew dramatically in 2025 and were reported around $500–568 million by early 2026, a surge from single-digit millions earlier in the year, while Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin supply/market cap reached about $1.26–1.3 billion across multiple chains [4] [5]. Ripple and partner Archax publicly targeted over $1 billion in tokenized assets on XRPL by mid‑2026, signaling the next institutional milestone if realized [8] [4].
4. What “live” means in these reports and where caution is required
“Live” covers a spectrum in the sources: some banks are executing live pilot transactions and custody flows (Standard Chartered, BNY Mellon custody of RLUSD) whereas others are running regulated sandboxes or pilots that stop short of wholesale issuance by the bank itself (Deutsche Bank’s pilots; Dubai’s sandbox uses Zand as the banking partner and Ctrl Alt for tokenization) — reporting mixes production pilots, sandbox programs, and vendor-led issuances, so “live” does not always equal bank-native, on-ledger legal issuance by a regulated bank [2] [3] [7] [9].
5. Motives, narratives and gaps in the public reporting
Ripple, industry press and affiliated vendors emphasize XRPL’s institutional roadmap and tooling (permissioned DEX, lending, privacy features) to drive momentum and targets (Archax $1B), an implicit commercial agenda to position XRPL as the preferred settlement and tokenization layer; independent coverage notes XRPL still trails Ethereum’s RWA volumes by orders of magnitude despite fast growth, and many projects presently rely on SPVs, custodians and vendor platforms rather than native bank issuance — public sources do not yet document wide-scale native-issuer tokenization by major global banks beyond pilots and custody arrangements [10] [4] [9] [11].