Ripple landed a South Korean banking deal and closed an upsized $275 million debt raise for its prime brokerage on Aug. 18, deepening its push into traditional finance. XRP itself has not followed: the token slid to about $0.98 in the past 24 hours before recovering above $1, even as leveraged bets on Binance climb to a two-month high.
South Korea's Jeonbuk Bank became the country's first regional lender to deploy Ripple Payments for cross-border business transfers, replacing SWIFT-based correspondent-bank transfers that can take days to reach recipients. Hours later, Ripple Prime closed an upsized $275 million private placement of senior unsecured notes to support its expanding US business.
Korea becomes a multi-product foothold for Ripple
Jeonbuk will use Ripple Payments for near real-time, around-the-clock settlement for customers including import-export firms, technology startups and online content creators. Fiona Murray, Ripple's managing director for Asia Pacific, said the agreement reflects "growing momentum" across South Korea's institutional financial sector.
The deal follows two other Korean partnerships this year: Kyobo Life Insurance, the country's largest life insurer, is exploring on-chain settlement of South Korean government bonds with Ripple, while internet-only lender Kbank is deploying wallet infrastructure through Ripple Custody. Jeonbuk extends a payments business Ripple says has processed more than $100 billion across more than 60 markets, with settlement available in fiat or stablecoins including RLUSD, USDC and USDT.
Ripple Prime taps debt markets again
Ripple Prime, formerly Hidden Road and acquired for $1.25 billion last year, priced its new notes with a BBB investment-grade rating from KBRA. Proceeds go toward working capital and general corporate purposes as the brokerage expands its US operations.
The brokerage clears more than $3 trillion annually and serves more than 300 institutional customers across digital assets, foreign exchange, precious metals, exchange-traded derivatives, OTC swaps and fixed-income repo. The notes follow a $200 million debt facility secured from Neuberger Specialty Finance in May, and Ripple said Prime's revenue had tripled year over year since the acquisition.
XRP demand has not followed the institutional wins
Ripple has not disclosed which settlement assets Jeonbuk will use, and Ripple Payments can run on fiat or multiple stablecoins, so the deployment does not guarantee XRP purchases. Ripple Prime provides exposure to XRP and is expected to use the XRP Ledger for parts of its post-trade infrastructure, but the fresh financing was raised for working capital rather than XRP purchases.
Meanwhile, XRP fell to about $0.98 in the past 24 hours, its lowest level since November 2024, before recovering above $1 to trade around $1.06 later in the day.
CryptoQuant data shows XRP open interest on Binance has climbed to about $461.3 million from about $360 million at the start of August, its highest level in two months. A sustained recovery alongside rising open interest could signal fresh positions entering, but continued weakness while open interest stays elevated would raise liquidation risk for leveraged traders.
Source: CryptoSlate
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