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Ripple sells software and payment services that help banks and businesses move money across borders quickly using blockchain technology.
Ripple is a payments technology company. It builds software that banks, payment providers, and businesses use to send money across borders, and it also sells a cryptocurrency called XRP that runs on its own blockchain network. The company's pitch is simple: international money transfers are slow and expensive because they hop through a chain of middlemen banks, each taking a cut and adding delay. Ripple wants to replace that chain with software that settles payments in seconds.
Its main product for financial institutions is called Ripple Payments (formerly RippleNet). Banks and payment companies plug into it to connect directly with partners around the world, rather than building one-to-one relationships with every bank they need. Ripple also offers liquidity tools that use XRP to bridge two currencies without needing a pre-funded account in each country — a business problem called "pre-funding," where banks must park cash in foreign accounts just in case a payment comes through. XRP, the company's digital token, is its other major revenue source; Ripple owns a large chunk of the total supply and sells some of it over time to fund operations.
Ripple's biggest vulnerability is legal and regulatory, not technical. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Ripple in 2020, claiming XRP was an unregistered security. A 2023 court ruling largely went Ripple's way on public exchange sales, and the case was dropped in 2025, removing a huge cloud that had hung over the company for years. The fight pushed Ripple to expand outside the U.S., and it now has a stablecoin called RLUSD and a growing custody business acquired through a deal for Metaco. Ripple remains private, funded heavily by its XRP holdings rather than by selling stock, though it has raised money from investors at a valuation reported in the tens of billions. Its main competition comes from traditional payment networks like Swift (a cooperative, not a listed stock), Visa and Mastercard, plus stablecoin players like Circle.
Saved answer · last researched 4 Nov 2026