Ripple announced strategic investments in ZILO and Licuido on August 3, 2026, backing two UK-based companies to expand the infrastructure for tokenized funds on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). The move comes five days after Aviva Investors launched what the companies describe as the first tokenized fund on XRPL, and signals Ripple's effort to position its blockchain as a serious platform for institutional capital markets.

Neither deal disclosed investment amounts, ownership stakes, or valuations.

What Each Company Does

ZILO operates a digital transfer agency platform that lets fund managers run conventional and tokenized share classes through a single system. Rather than requiring institutions to replace their existing operations, ZILO layers tokenized asset issuance on top of traditional fund administration. The company counts Citi, Fidelity, and State Street among its clients, raised £44.5 million (roughly $61 million) across two funding rounds in 2024 and 2025, and holds ISO and SOC2 certifications. Its platform uses pre-built "tokenization recipes" that let institutions design and deploy real-world asset contracts without custom scripting.

Licuido is an FCA-regulated tokenization platform founded in 2022. Its focus is narrower and more specific: it tokenizes money market fund (MMF) shares on XRPL so those shares can be pledged as collateral instantly, removing the need to liquidate positions during margin calls. The platform covers token issuance, distribution, secondary trading, and collateral mobility. Licuido served as the tokenization engine behind the Aviva Investors fund launch, which received regulatory sign-off from the Central Bank of Ireland.

Ripple's stablecoin RLUSD handles the cash side of transactions on XRPL, functioning as the settlement asset in delivery-versus-payment trades.

Why XRPL

Licuido CEO Brian Lynch said his team chose XRPL specifically because of its operational record. The network has run without a successful exploit for over a decade, a track record that matters when institutions are pledging regulated fund shares as collateral. Licuido uses XRPL's Multi-Purpose Token standard, which includes built-in compliance features such as fixed supply caps, transfer restrictions, and wallet whitelisting for institutional participants.

Ripple SVP for Trading and Markets Nigel Khakoo framed the core argument directly: "Tokenization alone is not enough. The real value derives from enabling assets to be traded, settled, and deployed as collateral in real time."

ZILO CEO Phil Goffin said the Ripple investment would "accelerate the development of compliant infrastructure for tokenized funds." Licuido's Lynch added that "meaningful liquidity depends on assets being able to circulate" within regulated markets rather than sitting idle.

The Numbers Behind the Push

XRPL's real-world asset market cap reached approximately $2.25 billion in Q1 2026, a 124% increase from the prior quarter. Total RWA value on the network is estimated at around $4.38 billion at mid-year, with roughly $2.6 billion in non-stablecoin inflows over the preceding six months.

RLUSD, Ripple's stablecoin, holds about 94% of the stablecoin market on XRPL and carried a market cap of between $1.6 billion and $1.65 billion as of June 2026, making it the eighth largest stablecoin globally. XRPL processed $4.28 billion in stablecoin transfers in a single 30-day window ending late July 2026.

The regulatory backdrop in the UK has also shifted. The Financial Conduct Authority published final rules in April 2026 (PS26/7) that formally bring tokenized authorized funds within the existing UK regulatory perimeter, giving platforms like ZILO and Licuido a clearer compliance path.

Regional Relevance: Africa and South Asia

For African markets, the ZILO and Licuido investments sit alongside Ripple's June 2026 participation in Flutterwave's Series E round at a $3.2 billion valuation. That deal embeds RLUSD into Flutterwave's payment infrastructure across 35 African countries, starting in Nigeria. The institutional layer (fund tokenization, collateral mobility) and the payments layer (remittance corridors, stablecoin rails) are now being built in parallel.

Licuido's live use case with Fortstock, which digitizes warehouse receipts into on-chain collateral for small businesses, has direct parallels in Africa's working capital markets. SMEs in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and Côte d'Ivoire regularly struggle to access secured lending against physical inventory. A regulated collateral marketplace running on XRPL could eventually reach those markets as the infrastructure matures.

In South Asia, the picture is more forward-looking but not without concrete signals. India's mutual fund industry crossed 60 trillion rupees in assets under management in the 2025-26 fiscal year, and India's Securities and Exchange Board has been studying tokenization for mutual funds. Unocoin's published XRPL 2026 roadmap analysis reflects a growing layer of Indian institutional interest in the network. The UAE-India payments corridor, active through Lulu Exchange on Ripple's ODL rails, also has direct relevance to NBFC liquidity management in the subcontinent. In Japan, SBI Ripple Asia received regulatory approval in March 2026 for a blockchain-based prepaid token platform, a development with implications for Southeast and South Asian corridors. No XRPL fund tokenization deal has been publicly announced in India or Bangladesh yet, but the Aviva fund launch and the FCA regulatory framework provide a precedent that regulators across the region are likely to study.

What Comes Next

Ripple has also integrated with the DTCC ecosystem through its Ripple Prime offering, where FICC processes more than $1.2 trillion in Treasury transactions daily. A live JPMorgan settlement of tokenized US Treasuries on XRPL, involving Mastercard and Ripple, was executed in May 2026. Ripple's acquisition of Hidden Road, completed in 2026, marks another milestone in its institutional infrastructure build-out, complementing the DTCC integration and the growing list of settlement partnerships. Existing XRPL tokenization partners include DBS Bank and Franklin Templeton.

The pattern is consistent: Ripple is stacking institutional partnerships and regulatory-compliant tooling across payments, custody, settlement, and now fund administration. Whether that stack can drive adoption beyond the firms already inside the XRPL ecosystem will depend on whether the pace of institutional onboarding accelerates as regulatory clarity spreads to new markets.