XRP News: Ripple Lands Saudi Deal to Test Blockchain for Payments, Custody, Tokenization

Key Insights:

• The latest XRP news shows that Ripple has struck a deal with Jeel, the innovation unit at Riyad Bank, to test where blockchain can actually be used in Saudi banking.
• The memorandum looks at three areas: cross-border transfers, digital-asset safekeeping, and turning real-world assets into tokens.
• It also fits with the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 push to upgrade financial services, as Gulf markets, especially the UAE, keep leaning harder into regulated digital-asset activity.

XRP News is moving deeper into Saudi Arabia’s banking sector through a new collaboration with Jeel. It is the innovation arm of Riyad Bank, one of the country’s largest lenders. The tie-up will assess where blockchain is going to deploy across the local financial system, underscoring rising institutional appetite for the technology.

Reece Merrick revealed the agreement on Monday. He is Ripple’s senior executive officer and managing director for the Middle East and Africa. He said the company will work with Jeel to evaluate a range of blockchain use cases.

On the token side, XRP Price was about $1.90 at the time of writing, according to market data. That reflected how traders continue to treat enterprise announcements as medium-term signals rather than instant price catalysts.

XRP News: What Jeel and Ripple Said They Will Test

Jeel and Ripple said the collaboration will assess whether blockchain can improve the speed, cost efficiency, and transparency of cross-border payments.

They also said they will explore use cases for digital asset custody and tokenization, with proofs-of-concept developed inside the Jeel Sandbox.

Jeel’s CEO, George Harrak, stated on XRP News that the work was regulated experimentation first, scale later. He said the effort uses the Jeel Sandbox to responsibly explore next-generation financial infrastructure while evaluating use cases that enhance cross-border payments and digital asset capabilities in line with the Kingdom’s long-term digital ambitions.

Ripple’s Middle East and Africa Managing Director, Reece Merrick, linked the initiative to Saudi Arabia’s broader digital push.

He said Saudi Arabia’s visionary leadership has established the Kingdom as a forward-thinking global hub for digital transformation, and added that Ripple signed an MOU with Jeel to explore integrating secure, efficient blockchain solutions into the national financial architecture.

Why Saudi Arabia is a Strategic Test Bed?

XRP News in Saudi Arabia’s push to upgrade its payment rails is showing up clearly in the data. Saudi shoppers are tapping more and using cash less. Electronic payments rose to 79% of retail transactions in 2024, from 70% in 2023.

Those two realities together, and the logic becomes clear. A market that already runs largely on electronic payments and also moves large volumes of money across borders has a practical reason to test new settlement tooling. This is the backdrop that gives XRP news around Saudi pilots more weight than a generic partnership headline.

Ripple positioned the Saudi work as part of its enterprise product set. In the same release, the company described Ripple Payments as a blockchain-based offering for cross-border payments. It described Ripple Custody as a way to store and manage digital assets, and Ripple Prime as a prime brokerage offering for institutional customers.

The release also made a direct link to the asset layer. It said Ripple’s stablecoin RLUSD and the cryptocurrency XRP are leveraged across these solutions to make traditional finance more efficient and enable new ways to utilize digital assets.

What Investors are Really Watching Beyond XRP’s Price?

On the token side, XRP Price was about $1.90 at the time of writing, according to market data. It reflects how traders continue to treat enterprise announcements as medium-term signals rather than instant price catalysts.

Payments get most of the attention, but custody and tokenization are the quieter pillars in this deal. Custody is where institutions spend time before they move size. Tokenization is where capital markets use cases can sit alongside payments in the same technical conversation.

That sequencing signals a build-and-verify approach, which is exactly what regulators tend to demand for market infrastructure.

The most important near-term indicator is not a chart pattern. It is whether Jeel and Ripple publish specific outputs from the sandbox, proof-of-concept results, compliance milestones, or additional participants, because those are the items that translate pilots into repeatable infrastructure.