Ripple has invested in two UK companies to expand tokenized finance on its blockchain. The fintech announced strategic investments in ZILO, a transfer agency firm, and Licuido, an FCA-regulated tokenization platform, on August 3. Ripple said the deals are expected to bring regulated transfer agency, issuance, and collateral mobility to its infrastructure on the XRP Ledger. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The move deepens Ripple's push into institutional capital markets. Both investments build on existing partnerships, and the two firms were already central to Ripple's first live tokenized fund. The company framed the deals around a simple thesis: tokenizing an asset is only the starting point, and the real value lies in what institutions can do with the token afterward.

What ZILO and Licuido do

The two firms cover different, complementary pieces of the tokenization stack. ZILO provides digital transfer agency and fund administration technology, essentially the software that keeps a fund's official record of who owns which shares. That role, known as transfer agency, spans the share register, buying and selling, investor servicing, and corporate actions, and ZILO's cloud platform is built to handle tokenized share classes as funds move onto blockchains. The London company has raised roughly 58.7 million USD in equity funding to date.

Licuido handles the other half. It runs an FCA-regulated tokenization and trading platform that manages the issuance, distribution, and execution of traditional financial assets so they can move as digital collateral through on-chain atomic settlement. In practical terms, Licuido lets institutions pledge tokenized fund shares as collateral instead of selling them, which is the collateral mobility piece Ripple has emphasized. Ripple's investment is intended to help Licuido scale its infrastructure and expand its collateral marketplace on the XRP Ledger.

Solving the idle collateral problem

Ripple's stated goal is to address idle collateral by letting tokenized funds be used as collateral from the point of issuance. Nigel Khakoo, a senior Ripple executive in trading and markets, said tokenization of assets is only the starting point, and that the real value lies in being able to buy, sell, and settle trades instantly, or use a token as collateral to borrow, lend, or post margin.

The infrastructure Ripple is assembling combines issuance, custody, collateral utility, multi-currency investment, and atomic settlement. Its RLUSD stablecoin serves as the regulated cash leg for delivery-versus-payment transactions, meaning the money moving through tokenized fund trades settles in a dollar stablecoin. Ripple pointed to its work with asset managers including Aviva Investors, Franklin Templeton, and DBS as evidence that institutions are deploying tokenized fund structures at scale.

Connected to a live fund launch

The two investments are not abstract. ZILO and Licuido both helped build the Aviva Investors fund that went live on the XRP Ledger the previous week. On July 29, Aviva Investors launched a tokenized share class of its US Dollar Liquidity Fund on the ledger, turning a partnership announced in February into a production system.

The structure of that fund shows how the pieces fit. The underlying portfolio never moved onto the blockchain, with a major custodian bank still holding the assets, so the fund continues inside its existing regulated framework while tokens on the XRP Ledger represent who owns the shares. Ripple defined the token standard, ZILO and Licuido built the issuance, distribution, and custody services around it, and a regulated custodian handled the tokens themselves. In other words, the two firms Ripple has now invested in were already the ones making its flagship tokenized fund work.

A measured read on the impact

It is worth noting what the deals do and do not do. The investments add regulated record-keeping, issuance, and collateral tools to the XRP Ledger, but they do not by themselves create new demand for the XRP token, since settlement runs through the RLUSD stablecoin rather than XRP. The companies have not published transaction volumes, named new clients, or shown the combined system operating at institutional scale, so the near-term effect is infrastructure groundwork rather than proven adoption.

The backdrop is a soft market for the token. Reports around the announcement placed XRP near 1.07 USD, down sharply on the year, with some analysts describing it as deeply oversold. Ripple has also continued making strategic investments to expand XRP Ledger utility over the years, even through its long-running regulatory challenges, so these deals fit a consistent pattern of building out institutional plumbing.

Why tokenization infrastructure matters for gaming

Although this is a capital-markets story, the infrastructure being built has clear relevance to onchain gaming. Web3 games increasingly lean on tokenized assets, stablecoin settlement, and NFTs that function as collateral or tradable property, and the same primitives Ripple is assembling, regulated issuance, instant settlement, and collateral mobility, underpin how real-world value moves through those game economies. Guilds have already experimented with using in-game NFTs as collateral, and stablecoin rails like RLUSD mirror the settlement layers that gaming platforms use for purchases and rewards.

As tokenization matures on ledgers built for finance, the standards and tooling tend to spread outward into consumer and gaming applications. A more robust institutional layer for issuing, settling, and collateralizing tokenized assets could eventually lower the barrier for game studios that want regulated, compliant ways to bring real-world value onchain. For now, Ripple's investments in ZILO and Licuido are aimed squarely at institutional finance, but they strengthen the broader onchain infrastructure that web3 gaming ultimately draws on.