Ripple is testing its RLUSD stablecoin in a Singapore central bank-backed project to improve trade finance payments. Ripple announced Wednesday that it had joined the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s BLOOM initiative and partnered with supply chain finance technology firm Unloq for the pilot.
Ripple said the pilot brings together Unloq’s SC+ trade finance system and Ripple’s blockchain payment tools. Unloq manages trade terms, settlement rules, and financing steps in one system. Meanwhile, Ripple handles the digital payment side through RLUSD and the XRP Ledger. If the pilot works well, RLUSD could gain a stronger place in Singapore’s payment market.
How Ripple’s pilot could change trade payments
The main goal of this initiative is to make cross-border trade payments faster and easier. In normal trade finance, payments often take time because they depend on manual checks, paperwork, and bank processing.
But, under this pilot, payments can be released automatically once agreed conditions, such as shipment verification, are met.
Singapore’s central bank launched BLOOM, short for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency, on 16 October last year. The project aims to improve settlement systems by using regulated stablecoins and tokenized bank liabilities.
BLOOM already includes major participants such as Circle, OCBC, Partior, DBS, Stripe, and UOB. Ripple now brings a new cross-border trade payment use case to the initiative.
Executives say the pilot supports real-world use
Commenting on the development, Fiona Murray, Managing Director for Asia Pacific at Ripple, said Singapore continues to lead in creating clear rules that help the digital asset industry grow. “Ripple is incredibly excited to be part of BLOOM, an initiative that perfectly aligns with our commitment to compliant, real-world utility for blockchain technology,” she added.
Letitia Chau, President and Chief Risk Officer at Unloq, said BLOOM is an important step toward improving trade finance in a safe and regulated setting.
“Through SC+, we are demonstrating how digital settlement rails can be integrated into existing trade and financing workflows without disrupting commercial relationships. Collaboration with MAS and Ripple enables us to explore scalable, interoperable models for cross-border trade.” Chau added.
RLUSD stablecoin has gained strong traction in the market after its launch. According to CoinGecko, the stablecoin now has a market value of about $1.43 billion.
Even with RLUSD’s strong growth, XRP did not see the same momentum. At the time of writing, the XRP was trading at $1.41, showing 0.02 percent decrease in the past 24 hours.
However, the latest Ripple move could improve market sentiment and may support XRP’s price in the near term.
