Ripple has made two new strategic investments in UK firms ZILO and Licuido, two companies that help turn traditional fund shares into instruments institutions can use on the XRP Ledger.

No dollar amounts were disclosed, a common approach for these infrastructure-focused transactions. Ripple said the investments deepen existing partnerships and add regulated transfer agency, issuance, and collateral mobility to its growing capital-markets stack on the XRP Ledger, the public blockchain Ripple originally built for cross-border payments.

The deals were announced on August 3 from London.

What ZILO and Licuido do

ZILO specializes in transfer agency, the process of maintaining the official record of who owns what inside a fund. That role is important for lenders that require a legally reliable register before extending credit against a tokenized share class. In traditional fund administration, transfer agents like State Street's IFDS have long served as the backbone of investor record-keeping; bringing that function on-chain without sacrificing legal certainty is one of the core challenges institutional tokenization faces.

Ripple said:

Deepening our push into capital markets, we are investing in ZILO and Licuido to add regulated transfer agency, issuance and collateral mobility to our capital markets infrastructure built on the XRPL. This comes on the heels of Aviva Investors tokenising its US Dollar Liquidity… — Ripple (@Ripple) August 3, 2026

ZILO's clients reportedly include State Street, Citi, and Fidelity International. As funds move on-chain, the official books still have to be maintained without adding operational risk, which is ZILO's role.

Licuido handles issuance and distribution, and it also helps make fund shares into digital collateral that can move through on-chain atomic settlement. In practical terms, that allows institutions to put assets to work for borrowing, lending, and margin posting without relying on the multi-day settlement cycle common in traditional finance.

Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin, launched as a regulated dollar-pegged token, is positioned as the regulated cash leg for delivery-versus-payment trades, so tokenized funds can, in theory, be used as collateral from the moment they are issued.

Nigel Khakoo, Ripple's SVP of Trading and Markets, said tokenization is only the beginning and that the real value lies in what institutions can do with the token after it goes live.

Compared with Ripple's Notabene investment

The ZILO and Licuido investments come about two weeks after Ripple made a strategic investment in Notabene, a compliance and transaction-authorization network that says it facilitates more than $2 trillion in annualized transaction volume across more than 2,300 institutions in over 100 jurisdictions.

That earlier deal was aimed at connecting RLUSD to a large regulated payment and Travel Rule network, making it a scale-focused move for enterprise stablecoin payments.

By contrast, the ZILO and Licuido investments are narrower and more targeted. They focus on the infrastructure needed for tokenized capital markets to function: ownership records, issuance, and the movement of assets as collateral.

Monica Long, Ripple's president, said in an August 4 post:

In the last year, we've seen the veritable light switch flip – from bank pilots to production, from issuing tokenized assets like money market funds and liquidity funds to using them! Institutional capital markets are moving in one direction — onchain 24/7. At Ripple, our goal… — Monica Long (@MonicaLongSF) August 4, 2026

Connection to Aviva Investors

The new investments follow the rollout of Aviva Investors' tokenized USD Liquidity Fund on the XRP Ledger late last month. Ripple described that fund as the first public-blockchain fund structure cleared by the Central Bank of Ireland. ZILO and Licuido were already part of that project, and Ripple's equity stakes now suggest tighter integration and faster scaling.

Rahul K posted on July 30:

🚨𝗔𝗩𝗜𝗩𝗔 𝗥𝗢𝗟𝗟𝗦 𝗢𝗨𝗧 $𝟯𝟱𝟭𝗕 𝗧𝗢𝗞𝗘𝗡𝗜𝗭𝗘𝗗 𝗦𝗛𝗔𝗥𝗘 𝗖𝗟𝗔𝗦𝗦! Aviva Investors introduced a tokenized share class for its US Dollar Liquidity Fund, approved by the Central Bank of Ireland. The new digital shares are issued on the XRP Ledger, marking a… pic.twitter.com/SmVbzYdClF — Rahul K (@iamrahulinc) July 30, 2026

Ripple's broader institutional strategy

For investors tracking XRP, the investments do not automatically create short-term demand for the token itself. Fees remain small, and settlement often runs through RLUSD. But the deals continue to build institutional on-ramps that could matter if they ever reach scale. Ripple's approach mirrors a broader industry pattern: competitors like Ethereum, Polygon, and Avalanche have all attracted tokenization mandates from major asset managers, and infrastructure depth—compliance, custody, transfer agency, settlement rails—is increasingly the differentiator as institutions evaluate which chains can support production-grade fund operations.

Ripple appears to be pursuing a long-term strategy focused on institutional infrastructure rather than speculation, with XRPL and RLUSD at the center. The company has been adding pieces of the institutional puzzle on both sides of the market: compliance and payments through Notabene, and capital-markets utility through ZILO and Licuido.

Whether these new infrastructure pieces will ultimately carry significant trading volume remains unresolved. For now, Ripple's shopping list continues to grow.