Ripple's New Bets on Tokenized Fund Infrastructure: What ZILO and Licuido Actually Do

Ripple invested in ZILO and Licuido to close a gap in how tokenized fund shares work on the XRP Ledger (XRPL): ZILO handles the regulated record-keeping that transfer agents normally provide, while Licuido manages issuance and lets those fund shares move as collateral. 

Together with Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin as the cash settlement layer, the two firms give institutions a way to issue a tokenized fund, keep a compliant ownership record, and use that fund as collateral without selling it. 

Why Did Ripple Make These Investments?

Ripple's stated reason is a structural problem in institutional real-world asset (RWA) tokenization: tokenized fund shares get issued, then sit unused. The ownership record, the issuance process, and the settlement mechanism have typically run on separate legacy systems that were never built to connect with onchain collateral markets. Ripple describes this as a consistent structural failure where tokenized fund shares are issued and then parked, with the ownership record, issuance rail, and settlement mechanism handled by separate, often incompatible legacy systems never designed to interface with onchain collateral markets.

Nigel Khakoo, Ripple's SVP of Trading and Markets, put the logic behind the deal this way: tokenization of assets is only the starting point, and the real value comes from what can be done with a token afterward, including trading it, settling it instantly, or using it as collateral to borrow, lend, or post margin.

These aren't Ripple's first moves into tokenized funds. In February 2026, Ripple partnered with Aviva Investors, a manager overseeing $345 billion in net assets, to tokenize fund structures on XRPL. 

The fund, the Aviva Investors USD Liquidity Fund, is already live. It became the first tokenized fund structure approved by the Central Bank of Ireland on a public blockchain when it went live on XRPL on July 29, 2026.

What Does ZILO Do?

ZILO builds transfer agency and fund administration software. A transfer agent is the party that keeps the official record of who owns shares in a fund, processes subscriptions and redemptions, and handles corporate actions. That job has historically been done separately from any blockchain system.

ZILO's platform brings that function onchain. Its transfer agency and fund administration technology gives asset managers, custodians, and transfer agents digital record-keeping that supports tokenized share classes as funds move onchain, so institutions get the regulated record they need to run lending and collateral markets with confidence.

On the same day as Ripple's investment, ZILO also shipped a product update. The company launched an integrated digital assets and transfer agency platform, letting institutions manage conventional fund units and tokenized share classes within one operating system, and it says the platform can support issuance, settlement, reconciliation, payments, corporate actions, and regulatory reporting without a separate technology stack for digital assets.

At a technical level, ZILO's configuration tools do the following:

• Translate fund rules, share classes, and jurisdictional requirements into onchain logic
• Record legal ownership as tokenized shares change hands
• Perform the reconciliation and reporting work a transfer agent normally handles in traditional fund administration

What Does Licuido Do?

Licuido, an FCA-regulated platform, is built for a narrower but specific job: turning fund shares into usable collateral without forcing an institution to sell them.

Licuido handles issuance, distribution, and execution of traditional assets as digital collateral. Its platform gives traditional financial assets, including fund shares, the same portability and utility already available to other asset classes, and it manages their issuance, distribution, and execution so they can move freely as digital collateral through onchain atomic settlement infrastructure.

The practical problem Licuido is solving: an institution holding a money market fund that suddenly needs cash currently has one real option, which is to sell the fund. Licuido is designed to give it a second option instead, pledging the fund as collateral to borrow short-term cash. That distinction matters most during stress. 

When margin calls hit, institutions selling money market funds to raise cash can force those funds to sell their own holdings, adding to downward price pressure. A pledge-instead-of-sell model avoids adding to that chain, which is part of why Licuido is targeting the repo market, where institutions already borrow cash against securities they hold.

Licuido's CEO and co-founder, Brian Lynch, described the aim as giving clients a way to move from static holdings to active ones. The platform lets clients deliver issuance, distribution, and utility within a controlled, confidential, digital capital markets platform, and Ripple's backing helps scale that infrastructure and Licuido's collateral marketplace on XRPL, helping institutions turn assets sitting idle on their balance sheets into liquidity they can actually use.

Licuido was already running in production before this investment. In Ripple's flagship Aviva fund launch, BNY Mellon held the underlying portfolio while the fund continued to operate inside its existing regulated framework, tokens on XRPL represented ownership of the shares, Komainu provided regulated custody for those tokens, and Licuido supplied the tokenization infrastructure behind them. Trades on that infrastructure settle on XRPL in three to five seconds.

How Do RLUSD and XRPL Fit Into the Stack?

Ripple frames the two investments as parts of a three-piece stack. ZILO provides regulated record-keeping, Licuido provides issuance and collateral mobility, and RLUSD provides the cash leg, together giving institutions a single operating model for tokenized fund assets from issuance through financing.

RLUSD is Ripple's dollar-backed stablecoin. In this stack, it's the settlement currency used when a tokenized fund share trades hands or gets used as collateral, so the cash side of the transaction and the asset side both settle on the same ledger. Ripple names RLUSD as the regulated cash leg for delivery-versus-payment transactions in this framework, meaning the money moving through these tokenized fund trades is a dollar stablecoin, while Licuido also plans to settle in traditional currency where needed.

XRPL itself is the settlement layer underneath all of it. Ripple reports that XRPL has processed more than four billion transactions since 2012 and is maintained by 120 independent validators.

Ripple's institutional pipeline extends beyond ZILO and Licuido. The company's push into institutional infrastructure also includes a September 2025 memorandum of understanding with Franklin Templeton and DBS to list Franklin Templeton's sgBENJI tokenized money market fund on the DBS Digital Exchange alongside RLUSD, with a stated path toward using sgBENJI as repo collateral. Ripple has described that collateral-mobility approach as the same structural idea it is now scaling through ZILO and Licuido.

What Comes Next?

The investments build on work already underway rather than starting from scratch. Ripple confirmed both investments build on pre-existing partnerships, and Licuido was already in production as the tokenization infrastructure behind the Aviva Investors USD Liquidity Fund before this deal was announced.

Several details remain open. Licuido said it would expand its collateral marketplace on XRPL without giving a launch schedule or naming participating asset managers, and future disclosures will need to show which funds use the combined stack, what regulated activities Licuido performs under its principal firm, and whether RLUSD gains measurable settlement volume. Licuido also says its legal structure links each token to one-for-one fund ownership, though that claim will depend on the documents and regulatory treatment applied to each product.

It's also worth noting what this deal does not directly do. Neither investment creates demand for XRP itself, since the tokenized fund shares and their collateral use run through ZILO's and Licuido's infrastructure and settle via RLUSD, not through XRP purchases.

As of August 14, 2026, XRP traded near $1.02, down roughly 2.7% over the prior seven days and close to the bottom of its 52-week range of about $0.99 to $3.35. Institutional infrastructure announcements like this one have not translated into sustained price movement for XRP so far this year, a pattern several market trackers have noted through mid-August.

Conclusion

Ripple's investments in ZILO and Licuido add two specific capabilities to XRPL's capital markets infrastructure: regulated record-keeping for tokenized fund shares through ZILO, and issuance plus collateral mobility for those shares through Licuido, with RLUSD handling cash settlement. Both firms were already working with Ripple before this deal, including on the live Aviva Investors fund, so the investment formalizes and funds an existing technical relationship rather than starting a new one. The financial terms of the investments were not disclosed.

Resources

1. Ripple official press release: Ripple Strengthens Digital Capital Markets Infrastructure with Investments in ZILO and Licuido
2. Report by Cryptopolitan: Ripple invests in ZILO and Licuido to expand capital markets on XRPL
3. Report by crypto.news: Ripple invests in 2 firms to scale XRPL tokenization
4. Report by CryptoNews: Ripple Invests in Zilo & Licuido to Unlock XRPL Capital Markets
5. Report by 24/7 Wall St.: Ripple Invests in Zilo and Licuido to Expand XRP Ledger Infrastructure
6. Report by Yahoo Finance: XRP News: Ripple Takes Equity Stakes in Zilo and Licuido to Fix Idle Tokenized Assets
7. Report by Asset Servicing Times: Ripple invests on ZILO and Licuido
8. Report by FinTech Global: Ripple backs ZILO and Licuido to scale tokenised funds
9. Report by CoinGecko: XRP Price: XRP/USD Live Price Chart, Market Cap & News Today
10. Report by Investing.com: XRP Historical Data