— Ripple president Monica Long said Brazil is the company’s largest market for stablecoin payments and its gateway into Latin America, with partnerships already running with fintech Nomad and Banco Genial
— The company will apply for a Central Bank of Brazil license to operate as a virtual asset service provider, targeting the foreign exchange and digital asset custody markets
— Ripple completed $2.45 billion in acquisitions last year — including GTreasury ($1 billion), Hidden Road ($1.25 billion), and payments platform Rail ($200 million) — and aims to become a “one-stop shop” for institutional crypto infrastructure
Ripple Brazil is no longer an experiment. The American blockchain payments company declared Brazil its single largest market for stablecoin-based payments and announced it will apply for a Central Bank license to operate as a regulated virtual asset service provider — a move that would give it direct access to the country’s foreign exchange and digital custody markets.
The Rio Times, the Latin American financial news outlet, examines why Ripple is betting so heavily on a country where stablecoins already account for 90% of all cryptocurrency activity and 26 million adults use digital assets.
Why Ripple Brazil Is Scaling Fast
Ripple president Monica Long made the announcements at the Merge conference in São Paulo, calling Brazil “a great market for early adopters” and pointing to Pix and open banking as evidence of a population ready for blockchain-based finance. The company already works with Nomad on treasury management and with Banco Genial for cross-border payment operations.
“We are happy to work with Nomad for treasury management. We want to show success with this use case and expand from there,” Long said. “We will move forward with fintechs, banks, and crypto-native firms.”
The Central Bank license application is a calculated bet on regulatory clarity. Brazil’s new crypto framework, which took effect this year, requires all virtual asset service providers to register and comply with capital requirements, customer asset segregation rules, and anti-money laundering protocols. Ripple opened a local office in Brazil in 2019 and launched its first crypto-enabled payment solution with Travelex Bank in 2022, but the license would mark a step change in its legal standing.
From Cross-Border Rails to Full-Service Platform
Ripple’s original model was straightforward: use stablecoins to “wrap” international transfers, moving money out of one country and into another with crypto bridging the gap in the middle. The company now wants to be far more than that. Last year it spent $2.45 billion on three acquisitions — treasury management firm GTreasury for $1 billion, prime brokerage Hidden Road for $1.25 billion, and stablecoin payments platform Rail for $200 million.
The goal is to become what Long called a “one-stop shop” for institutional crypto tools — not just payments but custody, trading, treasury, and settlement. In the US, Ripple already partners with Mastercard on stablecoin rewards for the Gemini crypto debit card.
XRP, RLUSD, and What Comes Next
Long said both the XRP cryptocurrency and Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin RLUSD have distinct roles. XRP serves as a bridge for illiquid currency pairs — smaller markets where direct conversion is expensive — while RLUSD handles mainstream dollar-denominated settlement. She added that XRP holders can lend their tokens to liquidity pools used by payment companies.
Brazil is a natural fit for this model. The country processed $319 billion in cryptocurrency volume in the past year — roughly a third of all Latin American crypto activity — and accounts for 77% of the region’s crypto market. New Central Bank regulations classifying stablecoin transactions as foreign exchange operations took effect this year, creating the regulatory framework Ripple needs to operate at scale.
“We believe digital asset-native companies can be partners of traditional institutions,” Long said. “Instead of replacing the traditional system with stablecoins, we can make transaction settlement more efficient.” For a country where one in eight adults already holds crypto and Pix has made instant payments second nature, the pitch may be one of the easier sells in global fintech.