Standard Chartered has switched on institutional custody for Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, RLUSD, giving eligible clients a bank-grade place to hold the token. The service went live on 12 October through the lender’s Dubai International Financial Centre branch, which is supervised by the Dubai Financial Services Authority.
The custody offering covers RLUSD issued on the XRP Ledger. The bank did not announce support for the version of the token that lives on Ethereum. Clients must already have access to Standard Chartered’s institutional digital asset custody platform in the DIFC before they can use it.
Waqar Chaudry, the bank’s global head of digital assets, framed the launch around how institutions manage risk. Jack McDonald, Ripple’s senior vice president for stablecoins, said the token was designed with exactly this kind of institutional use in mind.
The more interesting part is what comes next, and it is not live yet. Standard Chartered says it is working with Ripple and trading firm LMAX Group to let institutions use RLUSD as trading collateral without moving the tokens out of custody. Under this “collateral mirroring” model, the stablecoin would stay with the bank while LMAX recognises a mirrored record of its value against a client’s positions. For institutions, the appeal is lower counterparty risk, because assets never sit on a trading venue’s balance sheet.
Luke Dorney, LMAX’s head of custody, said the arrangement would give clients more flexibility in how they hold and deploy the stablecoin. The parties have not named the eligible products, the supported jurisdictions or a launch date, so the benefits remain expectations rather than results.
The announcement builds on a series of recent moves. Standard Chartered has offered crypto custody in Dubai since 2024. In July, it said it had become the first global systemically important bank to let institutions mint and redeem Circle’s USDC directly. It already runs a collateral mirroring pilot with exchange OKX under the framework of Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority, and in September it was appointed LMAX’s digital asset custodian through both its DIFC branch and its Luxembourg entity. Dubai regulators approved RLUSD in June 2025.
The bank is also looking beyond the UAE. It plans to launch stablecoin custody for institutional clients in Singapore by the end of 2026.
For Ripple, the deal deepens a relationship with Standard Chartered that dates back to 2015, and the bank invested in the company in 2016. LMAX, for its part, recently agreed a multi-year partnership with Ripple under which RLUSD becomes a core collateral asset across its institutional trading infrastructure. The deal included $150 million in debt financing from Ripple.
Crypto-market commentators were quick to note one thing the arrangement does not do: it leaves XRP out. Neither Standard Chartered’s custody service nor the planned LMAX collateral link involves the XRP token itself, so the deal channels institutional demand to the stablecoin rather than to Ripple’s better-known asset. That could change if LMAX later accepts XRP as collateral or the bank extends the same custody to it.
Even so, the launch is a meaningful signal for Dubai’s ambitions as a regulated hub for digital assets. A global bank is now willing to hold a non-bank-issued stablecoin on a public blockchain for institutional clients, under a regime that regulators there have already approved. If the LMAX link goes live, it could turn that custody service into a practical tool for funding trades.
