Ripple Backs Flutterwave at $3.2 Billion: Why RLUSD Won the Deal Over XRP

Blockchain giant Ripple joined the Series E investment round of African payments leader Flutterwave at a $3.2 billion valuation, but the settlement asset in the deal was the RLUSD stablecoin, not the XRP token. The large-scale partnership will cover 34 African countries, where the fintech giant has already processed more than one billion transactions worth over $50 billion.
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The integration of the systems through a single API will connect Flutterwave's gateways with the Ripple Payments network to eliminate delays and high costs in currency conversion.Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga "GB" Agboola explained the move by saying that the old banking system has exhausted its potential, and businesses now need 24/7 programmable money infrastructure, which is already being tested by merchants and the Send App.

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I'm glad to share that @Ripple has made a strategic investment in @theflutterwave as part of our Series E fundraising round, a reflection of a shared belief that the future of money will be faster, more open, and more global than the systems we inherited.The next decade of… pic.twitter.com/3ojHKOiExV— OluGB 🦋 (@TechProd_Arch) June 16, 2026 How Flutterwave plans to use Ripple's infrastructure However, the roles in this financial architecture have been assigned rigidly. The dollar-pegged RLUSD stablecoin is being integrated directly into cross-border channels as the core payment asset, while the XRP Ledger remains solely a technical rail for faster transaction clearing.
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This focus on stablecoins clearly explains why large businesses systematically avoid XRP in billion-dollar deals. Major companies still need full exchange-rate predictability to lock in margins, which stablecoins provide, while freely floating cryptocurrencies like XRP still carry the baggage of high regulatory risks and price volatility.This pragmatic pattern is also confirmed by Ripple's recent collaboration with Mastercard in the Agent Pay project for AI payments, where the international payments network also used XRP Ledger infrastructure but chose RLUSD as the default settlement asset to avoid taking on open crypto market risks.
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Still, Ripple's leadership does not agree that its base asset has been left behind. CEO Brad Garlinghouse continues to call XRP the "North Star" of the ecosystem, since any growth in XRPL-based traffic directly supports the network's overall liquidity.To finally remove the fear barriers around crypto for giants such as Mastercard or Flutterwave, Garlinghouse and Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty are now aggressively lobbying for the CLARITY Act, a bill designed to give digital assets official legal status in the United States and open the door for institutional capital.

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Ripple Backs Flutterwave at $3.2 Billion: Why RLUSD Won the Deal Over XRP

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