Ripple expands modular stack

Ripple used to be easiest to describe as a cross-border payments company. In 2025 and 2026, it started stitching together the other pieces a bank or fintech would need if it wanted to move, store, trade, and issue digital dollars in one system. (ripple.com 1) (ripple.com 2) That shift got clearer when Ripple folded its Ripple United States dollar stablecoin into Ripple Payments on April 2, 2025, so customers sending money could use Ripple’s own dollar token inside the same product. Ripple says the token is designed to stay worth one U.S. dollar and is backed by cash and cash equivalents held in reserve. (ripple.com 1) (ripple.com 2) (docs.ripple.com) A stablecoin is basically a digital poker chip that is supposed to cash out for the same amount every time. Ripple issued RLUSD on both the XRP Ledger and Ethereum, which lets the same dollar token move in two different blockchain ecosystems instead of being trapped in one. (docs.ripple.com) (ripple.com) Payments alone are not enough for big institutions, because money managers also need custody. Ripple has been building that layer through Ripple Custody, and in late 2025 it added features aimed at regulated institutions, including security, compliance, and staking support through a partnership with Figment. (ripple.com) Custody is the vault in this setup. If payments are the rails and the stablecoin is the train car, custody is the locked warehouse where the assets sit before and after they move. (ripple.com 1) (ripple.com 2) Then Ripple moved further up the Wall Street stack. On April 8, 2025, it announced a $1.25 billion deal for Hidden Road, saying the acquisition would give it a prime brokerage, clearing, and financing platform and make RLUSD usable for cross-margining between digital assets and traditional markets. (ripple.com) Prime brokerage is the backstage service desk for large traders. It bundles borrowing, collateral, trade settlement, and account access so a hedge fund or market maker does not have to wire money and assets through five separate firms for every strategy. (ripple.com) (ripple.com) By late 2025, Ripple said the Hidden Road acquisition had closed, the business had been renamed Ripple Prime, and the prime brokerage business had grown threefold since the deal was announced. Ripple also described itself as the first crypto company to own and operate a global, multi-asset prime broker. (ripple.com) That is why the “modular stack” language matters. A fintech can pick one piece like payments, or add custody, or plug in RLUSD, or use prime brokerage and trading access, instead of building each layer from scratch and negotiating with a different vendor for each one. (ripple.com) (ripple.com) Ripple’s next target is not just moving money between countries. President Monica Long said stocks and bonds are the next frontier, which points to a bigger ambition: using the same stablecoin, custody, and trading plumbing for securities settlement and capital markets workflows. (youtube.com) (ripple.com) If that plan works, Ripple stops looking like a single-product crypto company and starts looking more like a digital-asset infrastructure vendor for institutions. The bet is that banks, brokers, and fintechs will want one provider that can handle the dollar token, the vault, the payment rail, and the trading desk together. (ripple.com) (ripple.com)