A report from Digital Asset Solutions (DAS) explains how Ripple continues to push XRP toward becoming a major part of global payment systems.
The research, published in September 2025, highlights the company’s progress, the challenges it still faces, and the factors that could help contribute to XRP’s future role in international finance. Notably, Stern Drew, an XRP community figure, called attention to the report in a recent post.
Specifically, DAS pointed out that Ripple, which began operations in 2012, built its vision around improving cross-border payments, and XRP has an important role to play in this plan.
At the time of the report, Ripple had 36 billion tokens locked in escrow and held nearly 5 billion tokens as a spendable balance. As a result, DAS pointed out that Ripple and its founders’ control of a large portion of the supply creates the risk of future sell-offs as adoption continues.
ODL is XRP’s Most Important Use Case
The report particularly focused on Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) product (now Ripple Payments). For context, ODL lets financial institutions convert fiat currency to XRP or other assets, send it across borders within seconds, and settle it in the local currency on arrival. This removes the need for banks to keep large foreign currency balances.
DAS identified ODL as XRP’s most important real-world use case. The paper confirmed that ODL handled $1.3 billion in payments during the second quarter of 2025, which marks progress but still falls short of the scale seen in traditional payment networks.
According to the report, Ripple works with over 300 financial institutions, including SBI Holdings, Santander, and Tranglo. However, DAS explained that many partners still rely mainly on RippleNet’s fast messaging system rather than using XRP directly for settlement.
Concerns Around Regulation and Volatility
Moreover, concerns about regulation and volatility have continued to slow broader on-chain adoption. Nonetheless, recent regulatory progress may start to change this trend following the emergence of the crypto-friendly Trump administration.
The report also highlighted a change in network activity over the past year. Interestingly, while retail activity slowed, institutional usage climbed sharply.
In Q3 2024, on-chain transaction volume jumped by roughly 500%, and early 2025 data shows the XRP Ledger processing about 2 million transactions each day. Roughly 75% of these transactions settle in under five seconds, which shows the network’s ability to handle high-volume, low-margin payments.
Ripple Expanding to New Areas
Meanwhile, Ripple also continues to expand into new areas. DAS called attention to the launch of Ripple’s dollar-backed stablecoin, RLUSD, held in custody at BNY Mellon. With this, Ripple plans to tap into the stablecoin market, which could reach $2 trillion by 2030.
In addition, its acquisition of prime broker Hidden Road further deepens Ripple’s institutional reach, with Hidden Road preparing to support settlement directly on the XRP Ledger while using RLUSD as collateral.
Moving along, the report highlighted the recent improvement in regulation. After years of uncertainty, the U.S. SEC closed its case against Ripple in 2025, which confirmed that XRP does not fall under securities rules for public trading.
Ripple has since applied for a national banking charter and a Federal Reserve master account. The company also seeks an EMI license in Luxembourg to make RLUSD available across the European Union under regulated conditions.
Ripple Positioning XRP in Global Payments
DAS closed the report by saying Ripple currently stands at an important stage in its development. Notably, catalysts, such as XRP ETFs, the EVM sidechain, and new XRPL upgrades, could bolster XRP’s place in global payments.
However, the outcome depends on Ripple’s ability to encourage more partners to settle payments directly on-chain with XRP rather than stopping at interest alone. “Overall, Ripple is positioning XRP as an infrastructure project for global payments,” the report concluded.
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