From three engineers to 75 licences: how Ripple’s partner network was built, 2012–2026 — the documented record

This is the second long research piece from the Data Analytic Investments desk, and it follows the same rule as our documentary study RIPPLE: every number carries a publisher and a date, company statements are separated from press reporting, and where the record is silent we say so rather than fill the gap. Nothing here is a view on any asset. It is a map of who signed what, when.

The map matters because “Ripple’s partners” is one of the most repeated and least sourced phrases in this industry. We went back to the company’s own press archive, the SEC’s and OCC’s own pages, SBI’s own filing and the XRP Ledger’s own history — 48 opened documents — and rebuilt the network from there.

The XRP Ledger was started in 2011 by three engineers — David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto — with the stated goal of a system that worked like Bitcoin without mining. The ledger went live in June 2012. In September 2012 Chris Larsen joined and a company was formed, first as NewCoin, quickly renamed OpenCoin; the founders gave 80 billion of the 100 billion XRP to the company, most of which has since been held in escrow (xrpl.org, “History”). In 2013 OpenCoin became Ripple Labs, later shortened to Ripple; some press accounts date the shortening to 2015, and we follow the ledger’s own history page. Ripple’s own press boilerplate today says simply “founded in 2012”.

At this point the partner network is zero. The first fourteen months of the company are the ledger, the escrow and the name.

The first partnership that is still active a decade later was signed in Tokyo. On 18 May 2016 SBI Ripple Asia was founded, 60% SBI Holdings and 40% Ripple Labs, with 500 million yen of capital and SBI Remit as its first customer (SBI Holdings filing, 19 May 2016). Every Japanese line in this article — up to the 2026 RLUSD launch — descends from that document.

In 2017 Ripple opened its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore. In April 2018 Santander launched One Pay FX, the first mobile international-payments product built on RippleNet’s xCurrent; Ana Botín said it could cover half of the bank’s annual international transfers (Ripple Insights, 1 June 2018). In October 2018 xRapid — the product that used XRP as a bridge — became commercially available, with MercuryFX, Cuallix and Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union as first customers, and Brad Garlinghouse told the Swell conference that two financial institutions a week were joining RippleNet (Ripple press, 2 October 2018). xRapid was renamed On-Demand Liquidity within the year.

Then the number that has been quoted ever since. On 7 November 2019 Ripple announced more than 300 customers in more than 45 countries on six continents, with payouts in 70-plus countries and a tenfold annual growth in transactions; ODL customers named were MoneyGram, goLance, Viamericas, FlashFX and Interbank Peru, with corridors to Mexico, the Philippines and Australia (Ripple press, 7 November 2019). Qatar National Bank, Faysal Bank and bKash appear in the same release.

A note on that number. “300+” is a 2019 figure. Ripple has not published an updated customer count in a press release since; the “300 institutions in 55+ countries” that circulates in 2025–26 press is not a Ripple statement, and we mark it as unverified. What the company does publish in 2026 is markets (60+) and licences (75+). Those are different things from customers, and this article keeps them apart.

On 22 December 2020 the SEC sued Ripple Labs, Chris Larsen and Brad Garlinghouse, alleging $1.3 billion of unregistered securities offerings since 2013 (SEC press release 2020-338). For the next four and a half years every partnership announcement was made under that cloud.

The record shows the network did not stop. In March 2021 Ripple bought 40% of Tranglo, the Malaysian payments specialist that today lists 5,500 payout partners (Ripple Insights, 30 March 2021; ripple.com/customers). In May 2023 it acquired the Swiss custody firm Metaco for $250 million (CoinDesk, 17 May 2023). In June and October 2023 the Monetary Authority of Singapore granted in-principle and then full Major Payment Institution status. On 13 July 2023 Judge Torres ruled that Ripple’s institutional XRP sales were unregistered securities transactions but its programmatic secondary-market sales were not (S.D.N.Y., cited in SEC Commissioner Crenshaw’s statement of 8 May 2025). In November 2023 the Onafriq partnership opened three corridors into 27 African countries via PayAngel, Pyypl and Zazi Transfer; the same release describes Ripple as having “hundreds of customers in 55+ countries” (Ripple press, 8 November 2023).

The XRPL Foundation had been set up in September 2020 with $6.5 million from Coil, Ripple and GateHub; Ripple’s Middle East hub opened in Dubai’s DIFC the same year.

This is the period in which the network changed shape — from a payments network to a licensed financial-infrastructure group.

June 2024. The Standard Custody & Trust Company acquisition closed, bringing a New York DFS limited-purpose trust charter and roughly 40 US money-transmitter licences into the group (Ripple Insights, 11 June 2024).

August 2024. The court imposed a civil penalty of more than $125 million and a permanent injunction on the Section 5 finding (SEC statement, footnote 2).

December 2024. RLUSD, Ripple’s US-dollar stablecoin, launched under the NYDFS charter on both the XRP Ledger and Ethereum, with Uphold, Bitso, MoonPay, Archax and CoinMENA as first listings, monthly third-party attestations, and an advisory board including Raghuram Rajan and Sheila Bair. Ripple Payments at that date: $70 billion cumulative volume across 90-plus payout markets (Ripple press, 16 December 2024).

March 2025. Dubai’s DFSA licensed Ripple as the first blockchain-based payments provider in the DIFC; the company said about 20% of its customer base was in the Middle East and that it held “60+ regulatory approvals” (Ripple press, 13 March 2025).

April 2025. The Hidden Road acquisition was announced at $1.25 billion — a prime broker clearing $3 trillion a year for 300-plus institutional clients (Ripple press, 8 April 2025).

May 2025. The SEC announced a settlement: more than $75 million of the escrowed penalty returned to Ripple and the injunction lifted, with neither side challenging the summary judgment; Commissioner Crenshaw dissented (SEC, 8 May 2025). Press reports place the formal withdrawal of both appeals in August 2025; we did not open the court order and mark that date as unverified.

June 2025. The XRPL EVM sidechain went live with Ripple, Peersyst and Axelar, XRP as gas token and 25-plus validator companies (Ripple Insights, 30 June 2025).

August–November 2025. Rail (Toronto, $200 million), GTreasury (Chicago, $1 billion, 1,000-plus clients in 160 countries) and Palisade (custody) were acquired; Hidden Road closed in October and became Ripple Prime, with BNY Mellon as primary reserve custodian for RLUSD. Ripple counted five acquisitions in two years and said it had invested more than $3 billion in them (Ripple press, 7 August, 16 October and 24 October 2025).

December 2025. The OCC granted conditional approval for Ripple National Trust Bank, alongside four other applicants (OCC news release 2025-125, 12 December 2025). Ripple’s own release the same day put RLUSD above $1 billion in market capitalisation within a year and Ripple Payments above $95 billion cumulative volume. We found no final, unconditional OCC approval as of September 2026; the status remains conditional.

Also in 2025, and recorded here as fact rather than as a view: spot XRP exchange-traded funds began trading in the United States from September, and CME XRP futures launched in May (Ripple Insights, 17 April 2026).

What follows is every 2026 Ripple announcement we could date from the company’s own press index, with detail where we opened the release.

Three facts from that table carry the year. The MiCA licence turns thirty separate national conversations into one; the Japanese RLUSD approval closes a loop that opened with the 2016 SBI filing; and the three Korean signings — an insurer, an internet bank and a regional bank in four months — show the network now reaching a tier of institution that did not appear in any 2019 list.

The last official RLUSD figure is $1.7 billion (24 June 2026). Press reports put it above $2 billion in August; we have not seen a primary source and do not use that number. The last official XRP-ETF figure is $1.53 billion of assets across seven US funds (Ripple Insights, 17 April 2026).

Fifty-plus named organisations appear on opened Ripple, SBI, OCC or SEC pages. The filter is strict: a name is here only if we read it on a primary page, and “index” means we saw the headline but not the body.

Europe. Santander (2018); AMINA Bank, Switzerland (2026); Aviva Investors, UK (2026); Modulr, UK; Garanti BBVA, Türkiye; BiLira, Bitexen, Bitlo (2026, index).

Middle East. Zand Bank and Ctrl Alt (UAE); CoinMENA (2024); Pyypl (2023); Qatar National Bank (2019).

Asia-Pacific. SBI Holdings, SBI Ripple Asia, SBI Remit, SBI VC Trade (2016 → 2026); Tranglo (2021); Nium; Sentbe; Kyobo Life, Kbank, Jeonbuk Bank (2026); AltPayNet, ECIB, Corpay (2026); Novatti, Independent Reserve, Flash Payments, Stables, Caleb & Brown, Hai Ha (Australia, 2026); Unloq and MAS BLOOM (2026, index); Faysal Bank, bKash (2019).

Africa. Onafriq, 27 countries (2023); Absa Bank; Chipper Cash.

Americas. MoneyGram (2019); Cuallix, MercuryFX, Catalyst Corporate FCU (2018); Bitso (2024, 2026); Banco Genial, Braza Bank, Nomad, Azify, ATTRUS, Frente Corretora, Mercado Bitcoin, Foxbit, Ripio (Brazil, 2026); Travelex Bank; Interbank Peru, Viamericas (2019); Hidden Road → Ripple Prime and EDX (2025–26); BNY Mellon as RLUSD reserve custodian (2025).

Not on this map, because we found no source: Bank of America. Not on this map because we did not search for it in this round: BlackRock, Franklin Templeton or Ondo products on XRPL. If a reader has the primary document, the map is updated with the date.

The XRP Ledger itself reports 150-plus validators on the network and 35-plus on the default unique node list, of which Ripple operates one (xrpl.org FAQ, 2023 figures); Ripple’s February 2026 release counts 120 independent validators — a different measure, and we give both. The ledger has processed more than 4 billion transactions since 2012, has 7 million-plus active wallets (up from 6 million in mid-2025), and peaked at 3 million transactions in a single day on 15 March 2026 (Ripple, 11 February and 17 April 2026). A live explorer read on 7 September 2026 showed 2.2 million transactions in the trailing 24 hours, a 3.88-second ledger interval and 105 transactions per ledger (XRPScan). Real-world assets on the ledger were counted above $474 million in April 2026.

We built this timeline the way we build everything at Data Analytic Investments: one person decides, four AI systems — Sol, Vera, Faber, Argus — structure, review, build and watch, and a line does not close until a second party has read the source. Three things stood out.

First, the number that travels furthest is the oldest one. “300+ customers” is from 2019. Seven years later it is still the figure most often quoted, because Ripple never replaced it and nobody checked the date. A network’s public size can be frozen at the moment the company stopped counting in public.

Second, the network grew fastest under the lawsuit, not after it. Tranglo, Metaco, the Singapore licence, Onafriq, Standard Custody and RLUSD were all signed between the December 2020 complaint and the May 2025 settlement. The record does not support the story that the partnerships waited for the court.

Third, licences are now the map. In 2019 the company counted customers and countries; in 2026 it counts licences and markets. That is a change in what the company is, and the partner list changed with it: insurers, custodians, treasuries and a prime broker sit where remittance corridors used to.

The same discipline produced our documentary study RIPPLE — available as a PDF and an AI-narrated audiobook — and the market-cycle chapters of The Analyst Room. Regulatory filings, including the OCC and SEC documents cited above, are tracked on the Institutional Monitor; the method is taught in the Uncle Sunny Academy; daily short reads with sources are on Insights.

An updated customer count since 2019; annual (rather than cumulative) Ripple Payments volume for 2026; a final OCC charter; a primary source on any Federal Reserve master account; the court document formally closing the SEC appeals; and twelve 2026 announcements we could date but not open. Each will be added with its date when found.

Sources (all read 7 September 2026): xrpl.org/about/history and /about/faq; sbigroup.co.jp press release 19 May 2016; ripple.com press releases and Insights posts dated 1 Jun 2018, 2 Oct 2018, 7 Nov 2019, 30 Mar 2021, 8 Nov 2023, 11 Jun 2024, 16 Dec 2024, 13 Mar 2025, 8 Apr 2025, 30 Jun 2025, 7 Aug 2025, 16 Oct 2025, 24 Oct 2025, 12 Dec 2025, 11 Feb 2026, 3 Mar 2026, 11 Mar 2026, 17 Mar 2026, 1 Apr 2026, 17 Apr 2026, 29–30 Apr 2026, 24 Jun 2026, 6 Jul 2026, 18 Aug 2026, 27 Aug 2026, and the press index pages 1–3; ripple.com/customers; sec.gov press release 2020-338 and Commissioner Crenshaw’s statement of 8 May 2025; occ.gov news release 2025-125; CoinDesk 17 May 2023; xrpscan.com/metrics. Company and product names are the property of their owners; this site is not affiliated with Ripple. Educational content. Not investment advice.