Sending money across borders still means waiting days and paying steep fees at most banks.
XRP was built to fix that, and the number of institutions connected to Ripple's network has been quoted at over 300 since 2019.
The harder question is how many of them actually use the token.
The honest answer is smaller, and more interesting, than most lists admit.
This guide sorts the confirmed from the rumored, explains what actually happens when a bank sends money through XRP, and covers what changed in 2026 when Ripple started becoming a bank itself.
Key Takeaways
Two institutions on the standard list have confirmed live XRP corridors in their own words: SBI Remit in Japan and Travelex Bank in Brazil.
Ripple's "300+ financial institutions" figure counts network connections rather than XRP users, and it dates back to late 2019.
Santander uses Ripple's software but publicly declined to use XRP, saying the token was not traded in enough markets.
Banks never hold XRP themselves, because licensed exchanges buy and sell it on their behalf, which makes market depth the real limit on adoption.
XRP settles in 3 to 5 seconds with fees averaging $0.0002 per transaction.
Ripple's SEC case concluded in 2025, and the OCC conditionally approved Ripple National Trust Bank in December 2025.
Every list of this kind you will find, including earlier versions of this one, sorts institutions by region.
Geography tells you where a bank is.
It tells you nothing about whether the claim attached to its name is true.
So this list is sorted by evidence instead, and the shape of it is the story.
Institution | Where | What they actually use | What the evidence says |
SBI Remit | Japan | XRP | Announced by SBI Remit and by Ripple |
Travelex Bank | Brazil | XRP | Announced by press release, August 2022 |
PNC Financial Services | USA | Ripple network | Ripple's own announcement never mentions XRP |
Standard Chartered | UK | Invested in Ripple | The bank's own 2016 press release |
National Bank of Fujairah | UAE | Ripple network | Own announcement, CEO described tracking |
Al Ansari Exchange | UAE | Ripple network | Ripple's announcement says RippleNet Cloud |
Zand Bank | UAE | Ripple Payments, RLUSD | May 2025 network deal; February 2026 stablecoin deal, no XRP |
Faysal Bank | Pakistan | Ripple messaging | Uses it as a SWIFT alternative, not for liquidity |
Deutsche Bank | Germany | Ripple infrastructure | Announced intention, February 2026 |
MUFG Bank | Japan | Ripple network | Listed, never confirmed by the bank |
Axis Bank | India | Ripple network | 2017, nothing since |
Kotak Mahindra Bank | India | xCurrent (messaging) | 2018, nothing since |
UnionBank | Philippines | XRP wallet (2019) | Reported, never confirmed by the bank |
ChinaBank | Philippines | Ripple network | Listed, never confirmed by the bank |
Siam Commercial Bank | Thailand | Ripple network | RippleNet inside its mobile app |
Woori Bank | South Korea | xCurrent (messaging) | 2017 trial, nothing since 2019 |
Shinhan Bank | South Korea | xCurrent (messaging) | 2017 trial, nothing since 2019 |
CIBC | Canada | Ripple network | 2022, reported only |
American Express | USA | Ripple network | 2017 pilot with Santander |
Cross River Bank | USA | Ripple network | Listed, never confirmed by the bank |
RAKBANK | UAE | Ripple network | On Ripple's client list |
Qatar National Bank | Qatar | Ripple network | On Ripple's client list |
Riyadh Bank | Saudi Arabia | Ripple network | Listed, never confirmed by the bank |
Banco Rendimento | Brazil | Ripple network | Listed, never confirmed by the bank |
Interbank | Peru | Announced plans (2019) | Said it planned to start, at a Ripple event |
Standard Bank | South Africa | Ripple network | Listed, never confirmed by the bank |
BeeTech | Brazil | Ripple network | Listed, never confirmed |
Nium (formerly InstaReM) | Singapore | Ripple network | Listed, never confirmed |
SendFriend | USA | XRP (2019) | Now a B2B compliance business |
Remitr | Global | Ripple network | Listed, never confirmed |
Société Générale | France | XRP Ledger, not XRP | Own announcement, February 2026 |
Aviva Investors | UK | XRP Ledger, not XRP | |
Santander | Spain / UK | Ripple software | Publicly declined XRP |
MoneyGram | Global | Nothing | Partnership ended March 2021 |
Bank of America | USA | Nothing confirmed | The bank has never confirmed the claim |
Commonwealth Bank of Australia | Australia | Nothing confirmed | Described as exploring only |
Vietcombank | Vietnam | Nothing confirmed | Described as exploring only |
Frankenmuth Credit Union | USA | Sells XRP to members
| Not a payment use at all |
Two names clear the highest bar, which is that the institution itself has said so.
SBI Remit (Japan) — Japan's first XRP-powered remittance corridor, live since 2021, expanded to Vietnam and Indonesia by 2023.
Travelex Bank (Brazil) — Latin America's first, live since August 2022.
Both companies announced it, in their own words, on their own websites.
As a fully digital bank built entirely around foreign exchange, Travelex had less to lose than a universal bank would.
That is the confirmed list.
Two names, out of a list this long.
This is where most of the list actually lives, and it is not a scandal.
Ripple sells two things: a payment network that moves fiat currency with better messaging and tracking, and a liquidity service that uses XRP as a bridge.
A bank can buy the first without ever touching the second, and most of them did.
Four cases are worth spelling out, because a first-party source exists for each one and in every case the source says less than the lists claim.
Standard Chartered (UK) — the bank's own 2016 press release announces a strategic investment in Ripple the company. Owning a piece of a business is not the same as using its token. National Bank of Fujairah (UAE) — the bank's CEO described real-time payments with end-to-end tracking, which is the messaging product. The corridor runs UAE to India.
Al Ansari Exchange (UAE) — Ripple's announcement says the company joined through RippleNet Cloud.
The rest were named by Ripple or by the press at some point, and have said nothing since.
Asia-Pacific — MUFG Bank (Japan), Axis Bank (India, 2017), Kotak Mahindra Bank (India, 2018, messaging only), UnionBank (Philippines), ChinaBank (Philippines), Siam Commercial Bank (Thailand), Woori Bank and Shinhan Bank (South Korea)
North America — CIBC (Canada, 2022), American Express (USA, 2017 pilot with Santander), Cross River Bank (USA)
Middle East — RAKBANK (UAE), Qatar National Bank (Qatar), Riyadh Bank (Saudi Arabia)
Latin America and Africa — Banco Rendimento (Brazil), Interbank (Peru), Standard Bank (South Africa)
Payment providers — BeeTech (Brazil), Nium (Singapore, formerly InstaReM), SendFriend (USA), Remitr (Global)
Two entries in that group deserve a footnote.
Woori and Shinhan joined a 2017 trial run by a consortium of 61 Japanese banks, and the trial explicitly used xCurrent, Ripple's messaging product.
The same announcement mentioned a working group formed to explore whether XRP might be useful later, which tells you exactly where things stood.
Neither bank has said anything about it since 2019.
Santander said no, and explained why.
Europe's banking giant runs One Pay FX on Ripple's software, and the app has processed over $5 billion in transfers.
It has never used XRP.
Back in 2018, the head of One Pay FX told the Financial Times that the token was not actively traded in enough markets to cover the corridors the bank needed.
That was eight years ago, and Santander has not publicly revisited the decision since.
Which is its own kind of answer.
Not regulation. Not the technology. Market depth.
Keep that reason in mind, because it comes back later.
When the money stopped, so did the partnership.
MoneyGram has since launched a stablecoin on a competing blockchain, and it still appears on "banks using XRP" lists in 2026.
Western Union tried it and saw nothing.
Ten.
The number did not come from a critic. It came from Ripple's own senior vice president of product, who told Fortune the sample was too small to show savings.
Western Union's CEO put it less diplomatically: the practical matter was that it was still too expensive.
Eight years on, Western Union still does not use XRP.
There is a third category that nearly every list gets wrong, and it is growing fast.
A major European bank issuing a regulated euro token on Ripple's blockchain is real news.
It is also not XRP adoption.
The XRP Ledger became the stablecoin's third blockchain, after Ethereum and Solana, and the bank is using it the way a company uses a database.
The token itself plays no role beyond a network fee worth a fraction of a cent.
Real institutions, real infrastructure, no XRP.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Vietcombank — described as exploring Ripple's technology, which is not the same as using it.
Frankenmuth Credit Union — belongs in a different category entirely. It lets members buy and sell XRP. That is selling a coin to customers, not using it to move money, and the two get confused constantly.
You should not take this list on faith, and you should not take any list on faith.
Running a validator costs money and engineering hours.
Signing a partnership agreement costs a press release.
SBI Holdings runs one. Bitso runs one. Alloy Networks runs one.
The institutions that stopped at an announcement, which is nearly all of them, do not.
Four questions sort almost any claim in under a minute:
Did the institution say it, or did someone say it about them? A bank's own press release beats a crypto site's list every time.
Does the source say XRP, or does it say Ripple? Two different products, and the difference is the entire story.
What year is the source? A surprising share of claims still in circulation trace back to 2017 and 2018 pilots that nobody has mentioned since.
Has anyone checked whether they said no? Almost nobody does.
Traditional cross-border payments run on SWIFT, and a transfer takes two to five business days to arrive.
Banks have to keep pre-funded accounts in foreign currencies, called nostro and vostro accounts, which ties up enormous amounts of capital doing nothing.
Every extra bank in the chain adds a fee and a delay.
A typical SWIFT wire costs somewhere between twenty-five and fifty dollars, and that is before the exchange rate.
XRP sits between two currencies as a temporary stand-in, which removes the need for pre-funded accounts.
When SBI Remit sends money from Japan to the Philippines, yen becomes XRP, the XRP crosses the ledger, and it becomes pesos on the other side.
The whole thing settles in three to five seconds, and the ledger fee averages $0.0002.
The XRP Ledger handles up to 1,500 transactions per second.
This is the single most misunderstood point in the topic, and it explains most of the confusion in every list you will read.
Ripple Payments is the network.
XRP is the token.
They are not the same product, and using one does not mean using the other.
Ripple renamed RippleNet to Ripple Payments in December 2023, and folded its XRP liquidity service, previously called On-Demand Liquidity, into the same name.
Most people still search for the old names, so you will see all three used interchangeably.
A bank can join the network purely for the messaging and tracking, never touch XRP, and still appear on every "banks using XRP" list published since.
Faysal Bank in Pakistan is the clean example: it uses Ripple's messaging as a faster SWIFT alternative and does not use XRP for liquidity.
Travelex Bank in Brazil is the opposite, with XRP doing the actual currency conversion.
Here is the part almost every list leaves out.
When a bank sends money through Ripple's XRP service, the bank never touches the token.
Licensed exchanges do the buying and the selling on its behalf.
Yen goes into an exchange and comes out as XRP.
The token crosses the ledger in seconds, and a second exchange on the receiving end turns it into pesos.
The bank sees one payment.
The exchanges see two trades.
That detail sets a hard limit on where XRP can be used at all, because a corridor only works if both ends have a market deep enough to absorb the trade.
Japanese yen to XRP? Deep.
Philippine pesos to XRP? Deep enough.
Nigerian naira to XRP, at nine in the morning on a Tuesday, for a six-figure corporate transfer? That is a different question, and the answer is usually no.
Which brings back Santander's reason for walking away, and it is worth sitting with, because a Tier 1 European bank said out loud what the market structure already implied.
The token was not traded in enough markets.
This is the layer MEXC sits in, and it is why the honest version of this topic is not a longer list of banks.
Every XRP order book on every licensed exchange is a piece of the plumbing that decides whether a given corridor is possible in the first place.
Add a bank to the network and nothing moves.
Add liquidity to a currency pair and a corridor becomes real.
So what would it actually take?
A corridor needs a licensed venue on both ends, and it needs an order book in the local pair that is deep enough at the moment the payment happens, which is not the same as deep on average.
Remittance flows are lumpy. They spike on paydays and around holidays, which is exactly when a thin book hurts most.
Here is the part that almost never gets discussed. Somebody carries the price risk during those three to five seconds.
The bank does not, because the bank is quoted a rate and receives a settled payment. The market maker on the exchange carries it, and that risk gets priced into the spread.
Which means depth is not really about whether the order fills. It is about whether the spread stays small enough that the corridor still beats a wire transfer.
That test gets decided on exchanges, every day, in currency pairs most people never look at. It does not get decided in press releases. Confirmed
Nobody knows, and that is the honest answer.
The number you will see everywhere is 300+, so it is worth knowing where it came from.
Six and a half years later, it has not moved.
Ripple retired the RippleNet name in December 2023, folded the product into Ripple Payments, and has not published a fresh count since.
The bigger problem is that 300+ was never a count of XRP users to begin with.
Ripple has given a number for XRP usage exactly once.
In November 2019 the company said 24 institutions were using its XRP liquidity service, against a network of more than 300.
That is eight percent, and Ripple has never published the list.
Reporters at the time identified 19 of the 24, and the composition is the interesting part: Bitstamp, Bitso, Bittrex, Bitrue and SBI's trading arm were on it.
Those are cryptocurrency exchanges, not banks.
Which is exactly what you would expect once you understand who actually buys the token.
Three things pull institutions toward XRP: speed, cost, and capital efficiency.
Real-time settlement is a competitive weapon in remittances, where customers increasingly expect money to arrive now rather than Thursday.
When SBI Remit processes a transfer through XRP, an overseas worker's family sees the money immediately instead of waiting three to five business days.
Cost is the driver across Latin America and Asia, where remittance fees eat a painful share of every transfer.
Cutting out the intermediary banks and the pre-funded accounts lets an institution offer a better rate.
The pull is real.
So is the nine-year gap between the pull and the adoption.
This question shows up constantly, and it is the reverse of the one this guide opened with.
Not "which banks use XRP," but "is Ripple itself turning into one."
Partly, and the details are where the real story sits.
A national trust bank is not a normal bank.
It cannot take your deposits or write you a mortgage.
Ripple's version will hold the reserves behind RLUSD, its dollar stablecoin, and offer digital asset custody to institutional clients under both federal and New York state oversight.
The charter then sat mostly idle for four months.
On April 1, 2026, an OCC final rule widened what national trust banks are permitted to do, pulling custody and safekeeping formally into scope, which is what made the December approval operationally useful.
One piece is still missing.
Ripple has applied for a Federal Reserve master account, which would connect it directly to the Fed's payment systems, and that decision remains pending.
Here is the part the headlines skip: none of this changes XRP's regulatory status, and none of it creates demand for the token.
What it changes is the risk calculation for a compliance officer deciding whether to work with Ripple at all.
How many banks actually use XRP?
Ripple has published the number once, saying 24 institutions used its XRP liquidity service in November 2019, and the widely quoted 300+ figure counts network connections rather than XRP users.
Do all Ripple Payments banks use XRP directly?
No, most use the messaging layer without ever touching the token, while a much smaller group uses XRP as the bridge currency.
Which major U.S. banks use XRP today?
None have confirmed it, and the closest case is PNC, whose partnership Ripple announced in 2019 without ever mentioning the token.
Does Santander use XRP?
No, Santander runs One Pay FX on Ripple's software but publicly declined to adopt XRP, saying the token was not traded in enough markets to serve its corridors.
Does MoneyGram still use XRP?
No, Ripple and MoneyGram wound down their partnership in March 2021, and MoneyGram has since launched a stablecoin on a competing blockchain.
Do central banks use XRP?
No central bank uses XRP for settlement, and claims about institutions like the Bank of Japan adopting it are false, though they circulate widely.
Is Ripple becoming a bank?
Partly, since the OCC conditionally approved Ripple National Trust Bank in December 2025, though a trust bank cannot take deposits or lend, and Ripple's Federal Reserve master account application is still pending.
What is On-Demand Liquidity?
It was Ripple's name for its XRP service, where XRP bridges two currencies instantly so banks skip pre-funded accounts, and it now sits under the Ripple Payments name.
Has XRP replaced SWIFT for international transfers?
No, XRP runs alongside SWIFT as a fast lane rather than a replacement, and most banks keep both for different kinds of transaction.
The list of institutions connected to Ripple is long, and the list of institutions confirmed to use XRP is two names.
Both things are true, and most coverage of this topic only tells you the first one.
SBI Remit and Travelex Bank said it themselves.
Santander said the opposite, and gave a reason worth more than any press release.
MoneyGram left five years ago. Western Union ran ten transactions and stopped.
Everyone else is somewhere in between, which is worth remembering the next time you see thirty bank logos under a headline that says "confirmed."
The bottleneck was never the technology, and after the 2025 SEC ruling and the 2026 trust bank charter it is no longer regulation either.
It is whether enough XRP trades in the right currency pairs, at the right moments, to move real money.