Ripple, Coincheck Ink Asia Custody Deals as Banks Go Onchain

Ripple and SettleMint said on September 1 from Singapore that they have formed a strategic partnership aimed at giving regulated financial institutions across Asia Pacific a single system to custody, issue and manage tokenized assets. The announcement came one day after Coincheck Group N.V. (NASDAQ: CNCK) and DFNS unveiled their own tie-up to build institutional-grade custody infrastructure in Japan — the second major custody deal in the region inside 24 hours.

The Ripple agreement integrates Ripple Custody, the company's institutional digital-asset custody infrastructure, with SettleMint's Digital Asset Lifecycle Platform (DALP). According to the two firms, the combined offering lets regulated institutions hold and manage digital assets across the full lifecycle through one integrated solution, including the compliance and permissioning controls that heavily regulated banks and asset managers require.

Ripple Custody has widened its reach over the past year through partnerships with Securosys and Figment, an integration with Chainalysis and the acquisition of Palisade, giving banks, fintechs and corporates a faster route to holding digital assets, stablecoins and real-world assets. SettleMint's DALP manages an asset's post-launch lifecycle on a single platform, spanning issuance, compliance, custody, settlement and servicing, and is already used by institutions across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.

Adam Popat, CEO of SettleMint, said global capital markets are moving fully on-chain and that this shift only works when digital asset custody and lifecycle management operate as one system rather than two. Ripple and SettleMint said their offering has already begun in Asia, with plans to extend it to other markets as demand develops.

In Japan, Coincheck and DFNS plan to deploy DFNS's wallet technology through Coincheck's Japanese subsidiary, providing secure, institutional-grade custody for Japanese financial institutions in line with local regulatory requirements. DFNS operates a wallet-as-a-service platform supporting more than 100 blockchain networks, and the two companies said they will work toward definitive agreements as the collaboration progresses.

The deals land as Japan pushes tokenization toward scale, including a megabank-led consortium studying tokenized government bonds settled around the clock, with regulatory clarity gradually clearing the way for banks to act as qualified custodians.

XRP stays range-bound

XRP has so far shown no reaction to the news, consolidating near $1.37 on September 1 and back inside the $1.30 to $1.51 channel it traded in between February 5 and June 1. The token briefly broke above that range in late August, peaking at $1.69 between August 17 and August 22 before losing momentum. XRP is up 39% from its August 17 low, with $1.60 and $1.67 seen as the key levels standing in the way of a breakout.