Ripple joined Singapore’s MAS BLOOM sandbox on March 25 to pilot automated trade finance settlements using RLUSD on the XRP Ledger, alongside participants like JP Morgan, DBS, Circle, and Coinbase.
The pilot uses RLUSD as the settlement asset, not XRP, and 88% of RLUSD’s $1.56 billion supply sits on Ethereum—meaning most of the stablecoin’s growth doesn’t create direct demand for XRP.
XRPL’s auto-bridging and Permissioned DEX create an indirect path for XRP demand, but the Clarity Act needs to pass before banks will use XRP as a bridge asset at scale.
Ripple just got added to one of the most exclusive financial sandboxes in the world. BLOOM is a Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) initiative that tests how stablecoins and tokenized assets can settle real cross-border payments, and the other participants include JP Morgan, DBS, Circle, Stripe, and Coinbase. Ripple is using the sandbox to pilot automated trade finance settlements with RLUSD on the XRP Ledger—replacing the manual letters of credit process that has slowed cross-border trade for decades.
It’s a significant move for Ripple’s institutional credibility, and one of the clearest signs yet that regulators are taking RLUSD seriously as a settlement asset. But for XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) holders watching the price sit at $1.40, the question is if any of this actually reaches the token.
Ripple’s partner in the pilot is Unloq, a Singapore-based supply chain finance firm that built a platform called SC+. Unloq bundles trade obligations, settlement terms, and financing workflows into one system running on the XRP Ledger.
When a predefined condition is met—like a customs API confirming that cargo has arrived—the smart contract triggers an automatic RLUSD payment to the exporter. No bank has to manually review documents or push the payment through. The traditional version of this process uses letters of credit and correspondent banks, and it typically takes five to ten days. The SC+ model compresses that to minutes and is aimed at smaller businesses that get priced out of trade finance because they can’t afford the fees.
BLOOM isn’t a startup accelerator or a typical fintech partnership. MAS launched it in October 2025, building on Project Orchid—a digital Singapore dollar initiative that ran over ten pilots since 2021. The program has 16 members including some of the biggest names in global banking and payments, and getting into BLOOM means MAS vetted Ripple’s infrastructure and considered it credible enough for supervised testing with real trade flows. Singapore runs one of the strictest regulatory environments for digital assets anywhere, so passing that bar carries weight.
Circle is already a founding BLOOM member, which means Ripple’s RLUSD is competing directly against USDC inside the same sandbox. But the two stablecoins are being tested for different things. Circle’s USDC is primarily a payment and treasury tool. Ripple is going deeper by testing whether RLUSD can handle condition-based settlement tied to physical supply chain events, giving it a trade finance use case that USDC hasn’t demonstrated in BLOOM yet.
The BLOOM pilot settles trade payments in RLUSD, not XRP, and that distinction is key. Around 88% of RLUSD’s $1.56 billion supply sits on Ethereum, not the XRP Ledger, which means most of the stablecoin’s activity doesn’t touch XRP at all. Even the portion that runs on XRPL burns roughly 0.00001 XRP per transaction—you could push Visa-level volume through the ledger and barely dent the supply. This is a win for Ripple’s enterprise business but not a direct catalyst for the XRP price.
It also fits a pattern that’s been building all month. Ripple joined Mastercard’s Crypto Partner Program on March 11, launched a full institutional stack in Brazil on March 17, and now entered BLOOM on March 25. That is three major wins in three weeks, and XRP has barely moved from $1.40. Ripple is valued at $50 billion while XRP has dropped by 62% from its cycle high. The company keeps growing, but the XRP token doesn’t reflect it.
Date
Ripple Announcement
XRP Usage
March 11
Mastercard Crypto Partner Program
No (RLUSD settlement)
March 17
Brazil full-stack launch and VASP license
Partially (Braza Bank uses XRP as bridge)
March 25
MAS BLOOM sandbox with Unloq
No (RLUSD settlement)
The XRP Ledger does have a built-in feature called auto-bridging that routes trades through XRP when it gives a better rate than a direct swap. A Permissioned DEX launched on XRPL in February for regulated institutions, and Braza Bank in Brazil is already using XRP as a bridge currency on the ledger. If RLUSD activity starts shifting from Ethereum onto XRPL at meaningful scale, that’s when XRP starts to benefit. The BLOOM pilot at least runs on XRPL, which is more than most RLUSD activity can say right now.
BLOOM gives RLUSD a credibility stamp from one of the world’s strictest regulators, but it won’t move the XRP price on its own. The pilot runs on XRPL, which puts it closer to XRP than most of Ripple’s recent deals, but the settlement asset is still RLUSD and the token demand is still indirect. For that to change, the Clarity Act needs to pass. The SEC’s March 17 commodity classification is an interpretive release, not federal law, and banks won’t use XRP as a bridge asset at scale until legislation makes that classification permanent.
If the Clarity Act clears committee and RLUSD activity gradually shifts onto the XRP Ledger instead of staying on Ethereum, the infrastructure Ripple is building through pilots like BLOOM will start to matter for XRP. And that’s a process that could play out over years. BLOOM won’t be the catalyst on its own, but it’s one more piece of the infrastructure that has to exist before XRP’s price catches up to Ripple’s growth.
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