Ripple wins Jeonbuk Bank deal; Ripple Prime raises $275M

Ripple reached agreements on Aug. 18 in two parts of its business. Jeonbuk Bank agreed to deploy Ripple Payments for near-real-time cross-border business transfers in South Korea, replacing multiday correspondent-bank processes. The service will be available to import-export firms, technology startups and online content creators and can settle in fiat currencies or stablecoins including RLUSD, USDC and USDT through a single integration. Fiona Murray, Ripple’s managing director for Asia Pacific, described the agreement as “growing momentum” across South Korea’s institutional financial sector.

The Jeonbuk arrangement follows earlier projects in Korea: Kyobo Life Insurance is exploring on-chain settlement of government bonds and Kbank is rolling out wallet infrastructure via Ripple Custody. Ripple says its payments platform has processed more than $100 billion across more than 60 markets.

On the same day Ripple Prime closed an upsized $275 million private placement of senior unsecured notes. The offering received a BBB rating from KBRA. Ripple stated the proceeds will fund working capital and general corporate purposes inside a regulated entity as the prime brokerage expands U.S. operations.

Ripple acquired Hidden Road last year for about $1.25 billion and rebranded the business as Ripple Prime. The brokerage clears more than $3 trillion annually and serves more than 300 institutional clients across digital assets, foreign exchange, precious metals, exchange-traded derivatives, over-the-counter swaps and fixed-income repo. In May, Ripple Prime secured a $200 million debt facility to increase lending capacity; Ripple has reported that the brokerage’s revenue tripled year over year since the acquisition. The prime brokerage already accepts RLUSD as collateral for some products and intends to move parts of post-trade activity to the XRP Ledger.

Trading data showed XRP fell to about $0.98 during the day, its lowest level since November 2024, before rising above $1 to roughly $1.06. Exchange data showed XRP open interest on Binance climbed to about $461.3 million from about $360 million at the start of August, the highest level in two months. Higher open interest means more capital is tied to outstanding derivatives contracts but does not indicate whether positions are net long or short.

Jeonbuk’s announcement does not specify which settlement assets the bank will use. Ripple Payments supports fiat and multiple stablecoins, so the deployment does not automatically require XRP. Ripple Prime’s $275 million financing was raised for working capital and corporate use rather than direct purchases of XRP.