Here Is XRP Price If It Helps Bank the Unbanked Across the Globe

Many XRP proponents believe Ripple and XRP could help expand financial access for people who don’t have access to traditional banks.

They look at the project as a way to make financial services cheaper and easier to reach. Interestingly, if Ripple succeeds on a large scale, XRP’s adoption could soar, and its price could follow.

For context, the World Bank’s Global Findex Database 2025 reports that about 1.3 billion adults around the world still live without access to a bank account or mobile money service. That means roughly one in five adults remains unbanked despite improvements in account ownership.

More than 650 million of these unbanked people live in just eight countries: Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, and Pakistan. Also, 52% come from the poorest 40% of households. These metrics show how large the opportunity is to connect underserved communities to affordable financial tools.

How Ripple and XRP Could Help the Unbanked Population

Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service, powered by the XRP Ledger (XRPL), could make this possible. For context, ODL lets banks and payment providers move money across borders instantly and at very low cost, without having to keep pre-funded accounts in other countries. 

This solves the major problem of slow, expensive remittances and limited access to formal financial systems for the world’s unbanked population. 

Ripple’s system also helps reduce the high cost of sending money abroad. According to the World Bank, traditional remittances cost an average of 6.4%, and some transfer routes charge as much as 10% to 20%. 

With the use of ODL, Ripple cuts foreign exchange costs by 40% to 70% and overall settlement costs by as much as 60%. Moreover, what used to take days through networks like SWIFT can now finish in just three to five seconds.

Notably, lower fees make small transfers more affordable for migrant workers who send money home, especially in countries like India, Nigeria, and the Philippines, regions that together account for more than 650 million unbanked people. 

Ripple Partnerships

RippleNet also connects directly with mobile money and digital wallet platforms, which are already popular in places like Sub-Saharan Africa, where 40% of adults use mobile money. 

Ripple’s partnerships with companies like Thunes, which provides access to over seven billion mobile wallets through services such as M-Pesa, Airtel, and MTN, and with Flutterwave, make it possible to send funds directly to people without bank accounts.

Some examples already show how Ripple’s technology makes a real difference. In Japan, Ripple partner SBI Remit uses ODL to power instant remittances from Japan to the Philippines and Thailand through Coins.ph. 

XRP Price if It Helps Bank the Unbanked

If this vision expands, greater adoption could positively impact the XRP price. At the moment, XRP trades around $2.21, with about 60 billion tokens in circulation. However, how high the price could go remains uncertain.

To explore this, we asked Google Gemini for an analysis. The chatbot described it as a “thought experiment” that depends on optimistic assumptions about adoption, regulation, and market behavior. 

Gemini imagined an “everything goes right” scenario where the XRPL becomes the main global infrastructure for financial inclusion, serving half of the world’s unbanked, about 650 million new users.

In this scenario, XRP would act as the main bridge asset for most cross-border payments and microtransactions. Financial institutions and payment providers would hold large XRP reserves to maintain liquidity. 

If this level of adoption led to a $10 trillion market cap, similar to the world’s largest financial entities, Gemini estimated that XRP’s price could reach around $166.67 per token, based on its 60 billion circulating supply.