Ripple ZILO and Licuido Investment Boosts XRPL Rails

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Ripple announced the deals on Monday, around 08:00 GMT. According to the company, the two investments add regulated transfer agency, issuance, and collateral mobility to the XRPL. In short, they build the plumbing that tokenized funds need to actually get used.

What Ripple Announced

Ripple confirmed both deals in an official press release and a post on X. Both are strategic investments that build on existing partnerships.

Notably, Ripple did not disclose the amounts. The company also kept equity stakes, valuations, and round structures private. As a result, readers should treat the deal size as unknown.

Still, the direction is clear. Ripple wants tokenized funds on the XRPL to move like real financial products, not static digital records.

Inside the Ripple ZILO and Licuido Investment

The Ripple ZILO and Licuido investment targets two different layers of the same stack. ZILO handles the ownership record. Licuido handles issuance and collateral.

Together, they cover the post-trade work that sits behind any regulated fund. For context, tokenizing a fund is easy. Servicing it under financial rules is the hard part.

According to Ripple, RLUSD acts as the on-chain cash leg. So a buyer can settle a tokenized trade against a regulated stablecoin in one atomic step.

How ZILO Adds a Regulated Transfer Agency

ZILO is a London-based, cloud-native transfer agency platform. Phil Goffin founded it in April 2020, after he founded Calastone.

A transfer agent keeps the official record of who owns a fund’s shares. It also processes subscriptions, redemptions, transfers, and corporate actions. In other words, it is the source of truth for ownership.

That record matters for tokenized funds. Without a compliance-grade register, institutions cannot safely treat tokenized shares as collateral. According to Finextra, ZILO shipped its digital transfer agency platform the same day as the Ripple deal.

ZILO also tracks real-time ownership for tokenized share classes. As a result, funds can support lending and collateral markets without adding operational risk.

How Licuido Unlocks Collateral Mobility

Licuido is a UK tokenization and trading platform. It covers issuance, distribution, execution, and secondary-market collateral trading of traditional assets.

Importantly, Licuido Markets Limited is an Appointed Representative of Sapeno Partners LLP, which the FCA authorises and regulates. So it operates under a regulated umbrella rather than as a directly authorised firm.

The platform uses the XRPL Multi-Purpose Token standard for 1:1 legal ownership. Because of that, a tokenized fund share can be pledged as collateral right after issuance.

According to reporting from 24/7 Wall St., Licuido targets more than $10 trillion in money-market-fund liquidity. That figure is a stated goal, not a current metric.

Why the Aviva Tokenized Fund Set the Stage

The timing is not random. Last week, Aviva Investors tokenized a share class of its US Dollar Liquidity Fund on the XRPL.

The Central Bank of Ireland approved the launch. Meanwhile, BNY Mellon custodies the underlying assets, and Komainu handles digital custody.

The token follows a digital-twin model. The regulated UCITS fund stays off-chain, while XRPL tokens represent share ownership. For that launch, Ripple defined the token standard, and Licuido and ZILO supported issuance and record-keeping.

So the new deals extend a live use case. They are not a purely theoretical bet.

The Skeptics’ View on XRP

Not everyone reads the news as bullish for XRP itself. On X, some users noted a key point about settlement.

Atomic settlement of a US dollar fund against RLUSD does not require XRP as a bridge asset. So critics question how much direct XRP utility these deals create.

Others point to scale. XRPL real-world-asset volumes remain small next to Ethereum-based tokenized funds. Analysts have raised this gap for months, and it is not unique to this announcement.

For balance, the market reaction stayed muted. XRP traded near $1.07 on Monday, roughly flat on the day. No clear volume spike tied to the news appeared in available data.

What Comes Next for Tokenized Funds on the XRPL

Ripple frames these deals as one step in a longer build-out. Since 2023, the company has acquired custody, prime brokerage, and stablecoin firms to assemble an institutional stack. For example, it bought custody firm Metaco for about $250 million in 2023. Last year, it also closed the Hidden Road prime-brokerage deal for $1.25 billion.

Now the focus shifts to utility. Nigel Khakoo, Ripple’s SVP of Trading and Markets, framed the point. He said the real value lies in what users can do with a token. For example, they can post it as collateral to borrow, lend, or margin.

According to Ripple, more asset managers could follow the Aviva model over the next decade. Whether ZILO and Licuido reach clients beyond that first case remains an open question.

This article is informational and not financial advice. Always do your own research before making any investment decision.