Ripple is supporting a new institutional credit fund that will provide working-capital loans to fintech and payments companies using RLUSD, Ripple’s U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin. The project is being developed with Clearpool and Cicada Partners and aims to bring real-world lending activity onto the XRP Ledger.
According to reports, the fund will issue loans in RLUSD, allowing approved businesses to borrow and repay funds in the same stablecoin. Cicada Partners will be responsible for finding borrowers, setting loan terms, and managing credit risk. Clearpool will provide the technology and infrastructure needed to create and manage the lending pools. Ripple will participate as an investor alongside other institutions.
The companies have not revealed the size of the fund or how much capital Ripple plans to contribute.
Under the planned structure, Cicada Partners will act as the fund’s general partner and credit manager. The firm says it has previously underwritten more than $860 million in credit. Clearpool, meanwhile, says its platform has facilitated more than $930 million in institutional lending since 2021.
Ripple’s role will be limited to that of an investor. The company will not guarantee losses or take responsibility for borrower defaults. Credit decisions and risk management will remain with Cicada Partners.
The new fund is designed to give RLUSD a larger role in financial markets. Instead of being used only for trading and settlements, the stablecoin would also become part of a lending cycle where businesses can access working capital directly in digital dollars.
While RLUSD will be the asset being borrowed and repaid, XRP will continue serving its existing role on the XRP Ledger, including covering transaction fees and maintaining account reserves.
The move could expand RLUSD’s utility even further. Since its launch, the stablecoin has already seen strong activity on the XRP Ledger. Previous reports showed billions of dollars in trading volume involving RLUSD pairs, with adoption steadily growing throughout 2026.
If the lending system reaches the XRP Ledger mainnet, institutions would be able to borrow and lend dollar-based liquidity directly on-chain without using XRP as the loan asset.
However, the project is not ready for full deployment yet. The lending infrastructure is currently being tested on a development network because two important XRP Ledger upgrades still need final approval.
The first upgrade, known as XLS-65, introduces Single Asset Vaults, which allow funds from multiple participants to be pooled together under predefined rules. The second, XLS-66, adds a lending protocol that can issue, manage, and repay fixed-term loans directly on the blockchain.
The system is designed so that borrower evaluations and credit decisions happen off-chain, while the XRP Ledger handles fund transfers and loan accounting on-chain. This approach combines traditional credit assessment with blockchain-based settlement and record-keeping.
Both proposals are still moving through the XRP Ledger amendment process and require approval from network validators before they can go live. Until that happens, the lending product cannot operate using the planned native features on the mainnet.
Even so, developers and infrastructure providers are already testing the technology on the devnet to prepare for a possible launch in the future.
Security has also been a major focus. Earlier this year, RippleX developers worked with security researchers to formally review the lending framework and identify potential risks. The review examined both the lending protocol and the vault system, focusing on areas that standard testing might miss.
Security firm Halborn later conducted another audit and reported no critical or high-risk issues. The review identified a small number of medium and low-level findings, all of which were either fixed or addressed by the development teams.
One issue involved loan interest potentially bypassing a vault limit under certain conditions, but the audit noted that the matter was resolved during the review process.
The announcement comes as XRP experiences a strong market rally. The token has surged significantly over the past week, making it one of the better-performing major cryptocurrencies during the recent market upswing.
The broader crypto market gained momentum after the U.S. Treasury announced plans to expand its long-dated bond buyback program. The move pushed long-term yields lower and weakened the U.S. dollar, helping drive fresh interest in risk assets, including cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin climbed above key price levels during the rally, while XRP posted double-digit gains and extended its upward trend. Although some XRP investment products saw lower inflows during the period, the token continued to outperform many of its peers.
As Ripple, Clearpool, and Cicada Partners move forward with the RLUSD credit fund, the project could become an important step toward bringing institutional lending onto the XRP Ledger. If approved and launched on the mainnet, it would create a new use case for RLUSD and expand the range of financial services available within Ripple’s ecosystem.
