Arf, a Swiss-regulated financial institution headquartered in Zug, has partnered with Ripple to deliver stablecoin-denominated settlement liquidity to licensed cross-border payment companies operating on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). The arrangement uses Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin as the working capital instrument and targets a structural problem that has dogged the cross-border payments industry for years: the timing mismatch between when a payment company must fund a transaction and when the underlying settlement actually arrives.
Arf reported that it has scaled to roughly $10 billion in annual global settlement volume since launching in November 2022, with capital turning over approximately four times a month. That velocity matters commercially: short-duration, high-turnover liquidity looks very different on a balance sheet and in a regulatory capital calculation than a traditional revolving credit line, which can take months to establish and typically demands collateral pledged in a single jurisdiction. For payment companies whose working capital needs to move across markets in step with payment flows, that mismatch is the core operational constraint the partnership is designed to address.
How the facility works
In the first phase, Arf will provide RLUSD liquidity directly on XRPL. Drawdowns are expected to be repaid within one to five business days as cross-border payments settle, allowing the same pool of capital to be recycled repeatedly against live payment flows. Arf retains underwriting and working capital decisions offchain, while XRPL provides the settlement rail.
A second phase is contingent on XRPL’s native lending infrastructure becoming operational. Once available, Arf says it intends to migrate more of its liquidity activity onto the protocol itself, enabling onchain capital management alongside its existing regulated treasury functions. No timeline for that infrastructure milestone was disclosed in the announcement.
Ali Erhat Nalbant, co-founder and chief executive of Arf, said the company is “meeting that need at scale, with $10 billion in annual settlement volume and capital turning over four times a month,” adding that the Ripple partnership is designed to help payment companies “bridge that gap and support more payment volume.”
Market and regulatory context
The announcement sits within the broader PayFi category, a term used to describe financial products structured around real-time payment flows and the time value of money, spanning settlement liquidity, receivables financing and fiat-to-stablecoin treasury management. Arf and Huma Finance are credited with coining the category; the partnership with Ripple extends Arf’s regulated infrastructure into a public blockchain environment.
RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar stablecoin, launched in late 2024 and is positioned as a regulated instrument for institutional settlement use cases rather than retail trading. Stablecoins used in payment settlement are increasingly subject to regulatory attention on both sides of the Atlantic. In the EU, the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation covers asset-referenced and e-money tokens with specific capital and reserve requirements; in the UK, the Payment and Electronic Money Institution Regulations and the FCA‘s evolving stablecoin framework will shape how arrangements of this kind are treated domestically. Arf’s Swiss regulatory status under VQF membership provides a foundation for cross-border operation, though each market in which its liquidity is deployed will carry its own licensing considerations.
For payment operators evaluating the proposition, the key variables are the cost of RLUSD-denominated liquidity relative to existing bank credit, the jurisdictional reach of the facility, and the operational risk profile of a settlement rail that is partly onchain. The transition to native XRPL lending infrastructure, when it arrives, will shift some of that risk profile further onto the protocol layer and will be the more consequential development to watch.
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