SMS
Standard Chartered Bank's Dubai International Financial Centre branch now provides institutional custody services for RLUSD, a stablecoin issued by Ripple on the XRP Ledger.
An upcoming LMAX Group integration will allow clients to use RLUSD as trading collateral through “collateral mirroring,” meaning the tokens remain in the bank while LMAX records their value.
The market capitalization of RLUSD has grown to approximately $2.45 billion, still less than 1% of the $306 billion stablecoin market.
Standard Chartered Bank will now hold Ripple’s USD-pegged stablecoin for institutional clients in Dubai and aims to enable them to trade these tokens without transferring them to an exchange.
The UK-based bank announced on Monday: "Standard Chartered today announced it now supports institutional custody services for Ripple USD (RLUSD), issued on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), enabling eligible clients to utilize the bank’s digital asset custody infrastructure. This service is offered through Standard Chartered’s DIFC branch, which is regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA)."
Custody is an unobtrusive but critical infrastructure in the financial system: regulated entities hold your assets in their secure vaults and assume responsibility if something goes wrong. The custodian has legal liability for your assets and is accountable to you, but during the period of custody, they also gain the authority to monitor, freeze, and control the funds.
RLUSD is a stablecoin, a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a value of $1 USD at all times, as it is backed by U.S. dollars, U.S. Treasury securities, and cash equivalents. Ripple launched this token on Ethereum and the XRP Ledger in December 2024, and the service offered by the bank pertains to the XRP Ledger version.
The bank has also joined a planned integration with LMAX Group, a London-based market institution, aiming to qualify RLUSD as eligible collateral for certain LMAX products. Collateral, or margin, refers to funds deposited by traders on a platform to serve as a security deposit against potential losses.
According to the collateral mirroring mechanism described by Standard Chartered Bank, RLUSD will remain with the bank, while LMAX will receive a mirrored record of its value and account for it in customer trades. The tokens will not be transferred to the exchange.
Under this custody mechanism, even if the exchange encounters issues, traders' collateral will remain securely held at Standard Chartered Bank. Standard Chartered is one of the 29 banks designated by the Financial Stability Board as “too big to fail” and is subject to stricter capital requirements.
Standard Chartered has been providing cryptocurrency custody services in Dubai since 2024; in July of this year, the bank announced it became the first global systemically important bank to allow institutions to directly mint and redeem Circle’s USDC.
RLUSD was approved by Dubai regulators in June 2025. The LMAX-related components are not yet live. The bank stated that this service remains contingent on final documentation, testing, and regulatory approval, and has not provided a date for when customers will be able to use RLUSD as margin.