XRP Slips Near $1.20 as Ripple Backs Flutterwave, XRPL Draws $1.9B in RWA Inflows

XRP News

Ripple has taken a strategic stake in Flutterwave, one of Africa's largest payments providers, as part of the fintech's Series E round that values the company at $3.2 billion. The undisclosed investment makes Ripple a shareholder rather than a commercial partner and deepens its expansion across one of the world's fastest-growing cross-border payments markets. Alongside the equity deal, the two firms unveiled a partnership built on three pillars: embedding Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin into Flutterwave's payment rails and its Send App, using the XRP Ledger blockchain to speed transaction settlement, and connecting Flutterwave's domestic network to Ripple Payments through an integrated API.

Separately, RLUSD is broadening its reach far beyond its native rails after an integration with cross-chain infrastructure provider Squid extended the stablecoin to more than 100 blockchains. Ripple issues RLUSD on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum and has bridged it to layer-2 networks such as Optimism and Base via Wormhole's NTT standard; the Squid routing layer now links it to over 20,000 supported tokens, enabling functionality that resembles a multi-chain atomic swap. The expansion opens RLUSD to cross-chain settlement, decentralized finance, tokenized real-world asset platforms and enterprise treasury flows. Launched in December 2024, the token now carries a market capitalization of roughly $1.6 billion as adoption across the XRP ecosystem accelerates.

The tie-up reflects how stablecoins are moving to the center of Africa's payments story, where lengthy settlement delays and steep currency conversion costs have long burdened international transfers. Reece Merrick, Ripple's managing director for the Middle East and Africa, said the investment would establish RLUSD within Flutterwave's infrastructure while widening stablecoin circulation on the XRP Ledger. Flutterwave founder and chief executive Olugbenga Agboola framed the partnership as a way to connect African commerce directly to the global economy, describing the effort as a payments highway and pointing to Nigeria's potential to emerge as a hub for digital asset activity across the continent.

Flutterwave brings substantial scale to the arrangement. The company operates across 35 African countries and says it has processed more than one billion transactions worth over $50 billion, having raised in excess of $500 million to date. Under the agreement, RLUSD will serve as a primary settlement asset for high-volume channels, the XRP Ledger will handle faster transaction clearing, and an integrated API will stitch Flutterwave's local network into Ripple Payments. Executives describe the integration as the culmination of a multi-year stablecoin strategy aimed at combining clearing, liquidity and remittance functions on a single rail capable of real-time, predictable cross-border settlement.

By pairing traditional payment methods — local cards, mobile wallets and bank transfers — with Ripple's blockchain technology, the partners aim to dismantle the multi-day delays and high foreign-exchange margins that hamper remittances on the continent. Merrick said the goal is to bring the speed and efficiency of Ripple Payments to regional transfers and deliver lower-cost financial services at scale. Africa has become a focal point for digital-asset payments: on-chain data shows sub-Saharan crypto activity surged 52% over a recent twelve-month span, exceeding $205 billion in transaction value, with dollar-pegged stablecoins central to that growth as businesses seek cheaper ways to move money.

Institutional capital is also rotating toward the XRP Ledger. On-chain data shows XRPL attracted roughly $1.9 billion in net tokenized real-world asset inflows over the past 90 days, edging out Ethereum's $1.6 billion and Stellar's $1.4 billion. The figure does not mean the altcoin network has overtaken Ethereum, which still commands about 52.8% of tracked tokenized-asset value at roughly $17 billion, but it signals new money arriving in larger, treasury-scale commitments rather than fragmented retail trades. The shift has handed XRP bulls a fresh network-growth narrative, even as flows skew regionally — South Korea's Upbit saw its share of XRP wallet activity climb from 13% to 31% in the week through June 14.

COINOTAG's proprietary 42-indicator composite scoring engine rates the $1.2632 resistance at 80/100, the strongest overhead barrier, built on a confluence of the Fibonacci 0.382 retracement, the ATR upper band and the Ichimoku cloud top, while the $1.2138 level scores 70/100 off the Ichimoku Kijun and point of control. Immediate support sits at $1.2032, rated 72/100 by the previous-day low and Ichimoku readings. Derivatives data shows a near-flat 0.0003% funding rate and $700 million in open interest, with a crowded long/short account ratio of 3.30 — 76.7% long — that risks a squeeze. With the Fear & Greed Index at 22 (Extreme Fear) pointing to bear market conditions and RSI near 47, a daily close above $1.2632 would revive bulls, while losing $1.2032 invalidates the recovery.