Ripple scores major U.S. banking approval in push into traditional finance

As the XRP community prepares for the annual invite-only Swell conference, happening between October 27 and 29, 2026, Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple Labs, has welcomed the decision from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on the final approval for Ripple National Trust Bank, a federally supervised national trust bank.

The U.S. OCC granted final approval for chartering RNTB as a national trust bank. As a result, RNTB is now under the same regulatory authority as JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Notably, this final approval follows the conditional OCC approval in December 2025. The newly approved crypto-focused bank can manage the segregated reserves for Ripple USD and provide fiduciary digital asset custody services.

Ripple institutional expansion

Garlinghouse said the regulatory clearance for Ripple National Trust Bank is a major leap for the broader unification of cryptocurrency and banks. As such, the blockchain payment company is well positioned to scale the mainstream adoption of XRP and RLUSD.

“We’ve spent over a decade building regulated financial infrastructure that institutions can actually use at scale. A national trust charter gives us an even stronger foundation for RLUSD and the institutional products we’re building across payments, custody and capital markets,” Garlinghouse noted.

Asset performance amid regulatory milestone

Over the past 24 hours, XRP had gained 0.55%, trading at approximately $1.29 at the time of reporting, according to data Finbold fetched from CoinMarketCap. At press time, the crypto asset had a market capitalization of about $82.48 billion, with a 24-hour average trading volume of $1.56 billion.

Meanwhile, RLUSD registered a 24-hour average trading volume of 389.5 million and a market cap of $2.6 billion.

The two digital assets are well positioned to benefit from the final approval of Ripple National Trust Bank, especially amid bullish cryptocurrency sentiment.