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XRP’s strongest early payments argument was capital efficiency, not merely speed: institutions could pre-funded around the world
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That gap is narrowing fast. JPMorgan now offers eight-currency blockchain deposit accounts with onchain FX, while Citi says its 24/7 network can reduce pre-funding across more than 40 markets.
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XRP still has a role in situations where bank networks are fragmented or local FX liquidity is poor, but it increasingly has to compete with tokenized deposits and stablecoins, including Ripple’s own RLUSD.
For years, XRP had an obvious target in cross-border payments: banks could send a SWIFT message quickly, but actually moving and settling money remained slower and capital-intensive.
Ripple’s answer was XRP.
Its On-Demand Liquidity system converted one currency to XRP, moved XRP across the ledger, and then converted it to the destination currency. Ripple said this allowed customers to operate without pre-funding accounts in foreign markets, freeing working capital while settling around the clock.
That was arguably more valuable than XRP’s three-to-five-second settlement time.
As of Aug. 25, 2026, however, banks are beginning to attack the pre-funding problem itself.
JPMorgan Is Recreating the XRP Liquidity Pitch With Bank Deposits
JPMorgan’s Kinexys network may be the clearest challenge.
In June, the bank expanded its Blockchain Deposit Accounts to eight currencies: USD, EUR, GBP, AUD, HKD, JPY, RMB, and SGD. Customers can move those balances 24/7 and execute on-chain foreign exchange between supported currencies.
A company holding dollars does not necessarily need to purchase a neutral bridge asset to obtain yen. JPMorgan can provide the FX rate, convert the currencies and record settlement on its blockchain in near real time.
The bank explicitly says there is “no multiday clearing process, no intermediary holding funds, and no settlement window to wait out” for these onchain FX transactions.
That goes directly after the economic problem XRP was designed to solve.
However, the weakness is reach. JPMorgan’s system works inside a bank-controlled, permissioned environment. XRP does not depend on a single institution agreeing to issue both sides of a currency pair.
But wherever both currencies already exist as tokenized bank deposits, XRP has to demonstrate why inserting a volatile bridge asset makes the transaction cheaper.
Citi Is Going After Pre-Funding Without a Crypto Bridge
Source: finance.yahoo.com