Ripple USD Receives Approval in Dubai: What You Need to Know

Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin RLUSD today attained the designation of a “Recognized Crypto Token” from the Dubai Financial Services Authority, permitting its usage within the Dubai International Financial Centre. This classification, revealed just six months after RLUSD’s introduction under a New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) trust-company charter, establishes RLUSD as the inaugural fully-reserved US-dollar stablecoin accepted into the DFSA framework, thereby broadening Ripple’s regulated presence in one of the globe’s rapidly expanding digital-asset centers.

Ripple Expands In UAE With RLUSD Authorization

The DFSA’s recognized-token catalog, launched in late 2022 with bitcoin, ether, and litecoin, was enlarged two years ago to incorporate Toncoin and XRP. RLUSD now joins that exclusive group, highlighting the regulator’s approach of adding tokens only following a thorough due-diligence examination that looks into reserve structure, governance, and consumer safety protocols.

Distributed by Ripple Markets NY-DFS LLC, RLUSD is supported on a one-for-one basis by short-term US Treasuries, cash, and cash equivalents maintained in separate accounts, complemented by monthly attestation reports and the provision for same-day fiat redemption. These protections mirror the standards mandated by New York’s trust-charter framework—still perceived by many compliance professionals as the most rigorous in the stablecoin domain.

“The DFSA’s endorsement of RLUSD exemplifies our dedication to developing a stablecoin that adheres to the highest criteria of trust, transparency, and functionality,” stated Jack McDonald, Ripple’s senior vice-president for stablecoins. He remarked that the token “is uniquely positioned to propel institutional adoption of blockchain technology across international markets, commencing with cross-border transactions.”

Certification enables Ripple to integrate RLUSD directly into its DFSA-authorized Ripple Payments platform, offering banks and fintech companies a dollar-settlement alternative alongside XRP for on-chain transactions. Two initial DIFC clients—Zand Bank, the UAE’s pioneering all-digital bank, and fintech enterprise Mamo—have already gone live with the service, which facilitates 24-hour settlement into over 90 payout corridors.

The green light also makes RLUSD accessible to other DFSA-regulated virtual-asset organizations within the center’s robust financial network of 7,000 firms. Reece Merrick, Ripple’s managing director for the Middle East and Africa, characterized demand as “immense,” referencing corporate treasury departments, exchanges, and custodians that need a compliant on-chain dollar. “The UAE’s digital economy is lively and extraordinarily dynamic, and we’re eager to collaborate with our regional partners, clients, and regulators to accelerate that growth,” he noted.

Stablecoin adoption in the Emirates has been rising dramatically. Chainalysis estimates that dollar-pegged tokens represented over half of all crypto flows into UAE-based services in 2024, with the volume of stablecoin transactions increasing 55 percent year-on-year to approximately $9.8 billion. These statistics surpassed both bitcoin and ether volumes and demonstrate the nation’s trade footprint exceeding $400 billion, along with its demand for expedited settlement solutions.

By incorporating RLUSD into the recognized-token list, the DFSA fortifies Dubai’s allure as a jurisdiction where global trade enterprises can settle in tokenized dollars without regulatory confusion. This initiative also aligns with the emirate’s notable experiments on the XRP Ledger: just last week, the Dubai Land Department and tokenization firm Ctrl Alt commenced pilot transfers of property title deeds on the network as part of a planned $16 billion real-estate fractionalization project.

At the time of publication, XRP traded at $2.22.

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