Ripple Invests in ZILO and Licuido to Expand XRPL Institutional Capabilities

Ripple has quietly expanded its XRPL capital-markets push, announcing strategic investments in two UK firms—ZILO and Licuido—on Aug. 3. The deals are designed to beef up Ripple’s institutional stack on the XRP Ledger with transfer-agency services, token issuance, trading capabilities and tools to mobilize tokenized assets as collateral. Financial terms, ownership stakes and performance targets were not disclosed; both companies confirmed they received funding. ZILO also launched an integrated digital-assets and transfer-agency platform the same day, while Licuido said Ripple’s backing will help it scale its XRPL infrastructure. What each partner brings - ZILO: Provides transfer-agency and fund-administration technology. Its new platform lets institutions manage conventional fund units and tokenized share classes in a single operating system, supporting issuance, settlement, reconciliation, payments, corporate actions and regulatory reporting—without a separate tech stack for digital assets. ZILO says its configuration tools translate fund rules, share classes and jurisdictional requirements into on-chain logic and record legal ownership as assets move—replicating a transfer agent’s traditional function onchain. - Licuido: Focuses on token issuance, distribution and secondary trading, and positions tokenized fund units for use as collateral. Its regulatory setup is more complex: Licuido Markets Limited operates as an appointed representative of Sapeno Partners LLP, which is authorized and regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Under that model the principal firm sets permitted activities and remains responsible for the appointed representative—meaning Licuido itself is not directly FCA-authorized. How this fits Ripple’s XRPL vision Ripple says the investments will add regulated transfer agency, issuance and collateral mobility to its XRPL capital-markets infrastructure, and plans to use RLUSD as the cash leg in delivery-versus-payment (DvP) models. In that design, tokenized assets and payments settle together on XRPL rather than through separate systems, enabling tokenized funds to be used as collateral from issuance onward. Context and caveats Ripple highlights XRPL’s broader network metrics—more than four billion transactions since 2012, over seven million active wallets and 120 independent validators—but those figures reflect general ledger activity, not institutional tokenized-fund usage. Neither ZILO nor Licuido has published transaction volumes, named new institutional clients, or demonstrated the combined system operating at scale. These investments link into ongoing industry pilots. Aviva Investors launched a tokenized share class of its U.S. Dollar Liquidity Fund on XRPL on July 29; Ripple said ZILO and Licuido are among partners supporting issuance, distribution, custody and other uses for that product. The approach also echoes Ripple’s prior collaborations with DBS and Franklin Templeton, where tokenized money-market funds and RLUSD have been listed and explored for lending and repo transactions. Next steps and what to watch Integration work and client rollouts remain the gating factors. ZILO says it is providing a digital transfer-agency solution to Ripple but has not announced deployment dates; Licuido plans to expand its XRPL collateral marketplace without a launch timetable or named asset managers. Future disclosures should clarify which funds use the combined stack, what regulated activities Licuido performs under its principal firm, and whether RLUSD achieves measurable settlement volume. Bottom line: Ripple’s investments broaden the XRPL toolkit for institutional tokenization, but they stop short of proving adoption, revenue or liquidity outcomes. Ripple executive Nigel Khakoo called institutional tokenization a “substantial opportunity” over the coming decade—an optimistic company forecast that still needs market verification.