Ripple backs ZILO and Licuido to make tokenised funds usable as collateral

Ripple has taken equity stakes in two infrastructure firms, transfer agency specialist ZILO and FCA-regulated tokenisation platform Licuido, in a move designed to let institutions put tokenised fund shares to work as collateral rather than leave them parked on a balance sheet. Announced on 3 August 2026 from London, the investments convert two existing commercial partnerships into ownership positions and add regulated record-keeping, issuance, and collateral-mobility capabilities to Ripple's growing capital markets stack on the XRP Ledger.

The size of each investment was not disclosed. Ripple has framed the deals as the connective tissue between tokenising an asset and actually using it, the step most institutional tokenisation projects have yet to solve at scale.

What are Ripple, ZILO, and Licuido actually building?

The three pieces are meant to slot together. ZILO supplies the transfer agency and fund administration layer: the regulated record of who owns what, extended to cover tokenised share classes as funds move on-chain. That record is the prerequisite for running lending, margin, and collateral markets against a fund, since a lender needs a legally reliable ownership register before it will extend credit. ZILO, founded in London in 2020 and counting Citi, Fidelity International, and State Street among its clients, launched an integrated digital transfer agency platform earlier in 2026 alongside its Ripple partnership.

Licuido handles issuance, distribution, and execution, giving fund shares the portability that other asset classes already have and letting them move as digital collateral through on-chain settlement. Ripple's own dollar-pegged stablecoin, RLUSD, acts as the cash leg for delivery-versus-payment trades, so that a transfer of the tokenised asset and the corresponding payment settle together rather than sequentially. Trades settle atomically on the XRPL, typically in three to five seconds.

Nigel Khakoo, Ripple's senior vice president for trading and markets, characterised tokenisation as only the starting point, arguing that the value lies in what a token can then do: trade, settle, or serve as collateral to borrow, lend, or post margin. He pointed to Ripple's existing work with asset managers as evidence that tokenised fund structures are being deployed at commercial scale rather than tested in sandboxes.

How does this fit Ripple's earlier tokenisation deals?

The ZILO and Licuido stakes extend a run of institutional partnerships Ripple has assembled over the past year. In September 2025, Ripple signed a memorandum of understanding with DBS and Franklin Templeton to list Franklin Templeton's tokenised money market fund, the sgBENJI token, on the DBS Digital Exchange alongside RLUSD, with a stated path toward using sgBENJI as repo collateral. That structure, tokenized fund shares pledged for real-time credit, is the same collateral-mobility thesis these new investments are meant to industrialise.

The more consequential precedent is Aviva Investors. On 29 July 2026, Ripple and Aviva Investors went live with a tokenized share class of the Aviva Investors USD Liquidity Fund on the XRPL, the first tokenised fund structure approved by the Central Bank of Ireland on a public blockchain. That deployment already used Licuido for tokenisation infrastructure, with BNY holding the underlying assets and Komainu providing digital asset custody. In other words, Ripple is buying into infrastructure it has already put into production, not placing a speculative bet on unproven vendors.

Do the network figures hold up?

Ripple attributes the XRPL's suitability for institutional funds to its speed, low and predictable fees, compliance tooling, and absence of energy-intensive mining. The company states the ledger has processed more than four billion transactions since 2012, supports over seven million active wallets, and is maintained by 120 independent validators.

The transaction count is consistent with independent tracking, which put the XRPL past 4.2 billion cumulative transactions in March 2026. The wallet and validator figures warrant more care. Independent data shows the ledger crossed roughly eight million activated accounts in 2026, but only around 25,000 of those were active on a typical day, so "seven million active wallets" is better read as cumulative funded accounts than as a live-usage metric. Validator counts reported by third parties in 2026 run higher than Ripple's figure, at 130 or more, which if anything understates the network's decentralisation. Finance teams evaluating the ledger should treat the cumulative-versus-active distinction as material when modelling counterparty and liquidity assumptions.

Why This Matters to FinanceX Readers

The competitive frontier in institutional tokenization has moved past the act of minting a token. The open question for allocators and treasurers is whether a tokenised fund share can be financed, pledged, and settled with the same reliability as a conventional holding, and that depends on unglamorous plumbing: a regulated ownership register, a compliant issuance and distribution rail, and a settlement mechanism that eliminates principal risk.

By taking equity in the transfer agency and issuance layers rather than merely partnering with them, Ripple is signalling that control of that plumbing, not the blockchain itself, is where the value accrues. For finance professionals, the practical test over the next 12 to 24 months is whether these structures produce genuine secondary liquidity and working collateral, or whether tokenised funds continue to sit idle in a more sophisticated wrapper.