Ripple Expands UAE Partnership with Zand Bank for Stablecoin Innovation

The expanded agreement between Ripple and Zand Bank builds upon an existing payments partnership, shifting focus toward the core infrastructure of the emerging digital economy. According to Reece Merrick, Ripple’s Managing Director for the Middle East and Africa, the collaboration will explore several key areas. Central to the plan is supporting Ripple’s upcoming US dollar stablecoin, RLUSD, within Zand’s regulated digital asset custody platform. This provides a compliant on-ramp for institutional clients. Furthermore, the partners will work on establishing direct liquidity solutions between RLUSD and Zand’s UAE dirham-backed stablecoin, AEDZ, facilitating efficient cross-currency transactions on-chain.

Michael Chan, Chief Executive Officer of Zand, framed the partnership as a response to the inevitable movement of traditional finance onto blockchain networks. He described stablecoins, blockchain technology, and tokenization as fundamental building blocks for this transition. Chan emphasized that working with Ripple represents an important milestone for the UAE’s digital asset ecosystem, potentially reshaping how governments and businesses interact with secure, trusted blockchain-based solutions. The partnership is explicitly designed to operate within a regulated framework, with both companies committing to implement appropriate compliance standards, monitoring tools, and risk management controls.

A significant technical component of the partnership involves the XRP Ledger (XRPL). The companies announced they will examine the feasibility of issuing Zand’s AEDZ stablecoin directly on the XRPL. Any such deployment would be contingent on meeting stringent regulatory and operational safeguards. This exploration highlights Ripple’s strategy to position its native XRPL as a foundational settlement layer for regulated digital assets, particularly in forward-looking jurisdictions like the UAE.

The initiative aligns perfectly with the United Arab Emirates’ broader national strategy to become a regional and global nexus for digital assets and blockchain innovation. By fostering partnerships between homegrown digital banks like Zand—which is built around AI and blockchain—and established global players like Ripple, the UAE is actively constructing the regulatory and technological sandbox necessary for the next generation of financial services. The focus on a dirham-pegged stablecoin, AEDZ, is particularly strategic, as it digitizes the national currency and creates a sovereign digital asset for both domestic and cross-border use cases within a compliant environment.

This partnership announcement arrives at a complex time for Ripple’s associated digital asset, XRP. At the time of the announcement, XRP was trading at approximately $1.40, having registered significant losses of 26% and 33% over the preceding fourteen and thirty days, respectively. This price action positions the fifth-largest cryptocurrency 61% below its all-time high of $3.65, underscoring a disconnect between positive enterprise developments and short-term market sentiment.

Nevertheless, the strategic implications of the Zand deal extend far beyond daily price fluctuations. For Ripple, securing a deep partnership with a regulated UAE bank validates its enterprise-focused approach and provides a critical beachhead for its RLUSD stablecoin ahead of its launch. For Zand and the UAE, the collaboration accelerates the development of a homegrown digital asset infrastructure that connects local currency to global dollar liquidity via blockchain. The ultimate goal, as stated by both parties, is to create new infrastructure and use cases that seamlessly connect traditional financial services with on-chain systems, setting a template for other nations in the region to follow.