Arf plans to supply licensed cross-border payment companies with short-term liquidity in Ripple USD (RLUSD), Ripple’s U.S. dollar stablecoin, through a partnership with Ripple, aiming to help them finance transfers while they wait for settlement.
Arf announced Thursday, Oct. 22, that the first phase would provide RLUSD settlement liquidity on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). Payment firms could use the service through their existing operations, with XRPL supporting settlement in the background, Arf said. The company said the working capital is generally repaid within one to five days as the underlying payments settle.
Arf has not announced when the service will begin or how much RLUSD it will make available. Its announcement named no participating firms and provided no borrower fees, pricing or other financing terms.
Arf said payment companies often need to send funds before transfers coming from other markets have settled. It described traditional bank credit lines as a possible alternative that can take months to arrange and may require significant collateral. The announcement did not say what the planned RLUSD liquidity would cost borrowers.
The company reported annual global settlement volume of about $10 billion and said its capital turns over four times a month. Arf did not identify either figure as funding or activity committed to the XRPL plan. Arf co-founder and CEO Ali Erhat Nalbant said, “We’re bringing stablecoin working capital to the XRP Ledger.” RippleX head of product Jasmine Cooper said settlement liquidity is “exactly the kind of use case XRPL and RLUSD are built to support.”
Ripple and DriveWealth said on Oct. 14 that they were developing an RLUSD settlement service for brokerage collateral accounts, with Europe as the initial market and plans to expand to the United States. DriveWealth separately described stablecoin funding for brokerage collateral accounts. The firms’ earlier RLUSD settlement plan also did not set a service launch date.
Arf said a later phase could use XRPL’s Single Asset Vaults and Lending Protocol for more settlement activity, while underwriting and working-capital decisions would remain offchain. Those features are subject to XRPL’s amendment process. The ledger’s website lists native lending as “Coming Soon,” and Arf has not given an activation timeline.
