Money used to move at the speed of a physical letter. It’s kinda wild when you think about it. In 2026, we still have "settlement delays" that feel like a relic from the 1970s. But the relationship between banks and XRP price has finally moved past the "is it a security?" drama and into the "how do we actually use this?" phase.
Honestly, the landscape shifted big time in August 2025. That was when Ripple Labs finally settled that marathon legal battle with the SEC for $50 million. It wasn't just a win; it was a green light. Since then, we've seen XRP reclaim a massive chunk of its former glory. As of mid-January 2026, the banks and XRP price connection is driving the token to trade around **$2.09 to $2.14**.
That’s a far cry from the sub-dollar days of 2024.
Why Banks Are Actually Moving the Needle Now
For years, people talked about "bank adoption" like it was a ghost story—everyone heard about it, but nobody saw it. That changed when Standard Chartered and SBI Holdings stopped "piloting" and started "producing."
Specifically, the On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service, now often called Ripple Payments, has become the backbone for several major corridors. Think Japan to Southeast Asia. SBI Remit is currently using XRP to bypass the old-school "nostro/vostro" system. Usually, a bank has to keep a mountain of local currency sitting idle in a foreign account just to make payments work. It’s dead capital. By using XRP as a bridge, they can settle in three seconds.
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The efficiency is hard to ignore.
Standard Chartered’s digital asset team recently projected that if this institutional momentum keeps up, we could see XRP hitting $8.00 by the end of 2026. Geoffrey Kendrick, their head of digital assets research, isn't just throwing darts at a board. He’s looking at the math of Spot XRP ETFs. Since their launch in November 2025, these ETFs have sucked up over $1.2 billion in net inflows. That’s hundreds of millions of XRP locked away in institutional vaults, tightening the supply while banks increase the demand.
The Real-World Players
- PNC Bank: One of the first major U.S. players to jump on RippleNet for real-time international payments.
- Santander: They’ve been using the tech for their One Pay FX app, helping retail customers send money across borders without the three-day wait.
- Lloyds: Just recently executed a tokenized deposit transaction in the UK, signaling that the "big four" are no longer sitting on the sidelines.
- Bank of America: While they’ve been more conservative, their confirmed pilots of Ripple’s infrastructure have kept the market's eyes glued to every quarterly report.
The Stablecoin Twist: RLUSD
You might think a stablecoin would kill the need for XRP. It's actually the opposite. Ripple launched RLUSD (Ripple USD) in late 2024, and by early 2026, it hit over $1.3 billion in circulation.
Here is how it works in the real world:
Banks are terrified of volatility. They don't want to hold an asset that might drop 5% while a billion-dollar transfer is in mid-air. RLUSD provides the "stable" side of the transaction, while XRP provides the "liquidity" between different fiat currencies. It’s a tag-team effort. BNY Mellon—yes, the oldest bank in America—is now acting as a primary custodian for the reserves backing RLUSD. When a bank like BNY Mellon gets involved, the "crypto is a scam" argument pretty much dies in the hallway.
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Is $100 Per Token Realistic?
You'll see "moon boys" on YouTube claiming XRP is going to $100 or even $500. Let's be real for a second. With a circulating supply of roughly 60.7 billion tokens, a $100 price tag would mean a market cap of over **$6 trillion**.
That is more than the market cap of Apple and Microsoft combined.
While the tech is great, the math for $100 requires XRP to basically replace the entire global reserve system overnight. Most sober analysts, including those at The Motley Fool, point out that while the banks and XRP price synergy is strong, the asset's primary job is to move money quickly, not to stay locked in a vault forever. High velocity actually means you need less capital locked in the system, which can actually act as a ceiling on the price.
Still, moving from $2.00 to $5.00 or $8.00? That’s a massive jump that plenty of hedge funds are currently betting on.
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The 2026 "Banking Charter" Wildcard
The biggest thing to watch right now is Ripple’s application for a federal banking charter in the U.S. They filed the paperwork in December 2025.
If it gets approved this year, Ripple becomes more than a software company. It becomes a regulated financial institution with direct access to the Federal Reserve’s systems. This would allow pension funds and insurance companies—the "slow money" that controls trillions—to finally touch XRP without getting fired by their compliance officers.
Critical Steps for Investors
If you're watching the banks and XRP price charts, don't just look at the green and red candles. Look at the "plumbing."
- Monitor ETF Inflows: Track the weekly reports from issuers like Bitwise and Canary Capital. If the inflows turn into outflows, the "supply crunch" narrative weakens.
- Watch the Market Structure Bill: The U.S. Senate is currently marking up legislation that could finally codify how banks can hold digital assets. A "yes" vote here is worth more than a hundred celebrity endorsements.
- Keep an Eye on the $2.41 Resistance: Technical analysts are flagging this level as a major "supply wall." Breaking through it could trigger a run toward the all-time high of $3.84.
- Ignore the $100 Hype: Focus on institutional adoption metrics like ODL volume and the number of active wallets on the XRP Ledger, which surged 142% recently.
The era of XRP being a "speculative coin" is ending. It’s becoming part of the boring, everyday infrastructure of global banking. And in finance, "boring" is where the real money usually hides.