Ripple Acquires Standard Custody & Trust To Expand U.S. Financial Product Offerings Despite Ongoing SEC Clash

Ripple is acquiring Standard Custody & Trust as it looks to expand its product offerings in the U.S. despite its ongoing legal battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Ripple has yet to disclose the terms of the deal as it awaits approval from the New York Department of Financial Services. If it’s approved, Ripple will add a crypto custody and settlement business to its suite of products, enabling customers to maintain custody with Ripple instead of competitors.

Ripple Adds More Services For Institutional Clients

It will also allow the company to offer tokenization services to financial firms as it looks to expand its services beyond just a payment network. This will open up a range of financial products that will let the company’s institutional clients benefit from blockchain technology.

“We want to offer more and more of these infrastructure pieces to these financial institutions,” said Ripple President Monica Long in an interview with CoinDesk. “We see this as giving us a lot of flexibility.”

Today, we’re excited to announce that Ripple has signed a deal to acquire @StandardCustody, strengthening our product offerings and adding to our growing portfolio of regulatory licenses around the world. Learn more about our latest acquisition: https://t.co/JJp51mEabL

— Ripple (@Ripple) February 13, 2024

The latest acquisition by Ripple follows a deal last year in which the company bought the crypto custody firm Metaco.

Regulatory Uncertainty The Primary Concern For Ripple

Ripple has been in an ongoing lawsuit with the SEC on accusations that XRP was a security. While Ripple won a partial victory on that in an earlier hearing, the case will proceed in higher courts. 

Long said in the interview that the company’s hesitation about expanding in the U.S. is not so much about its clash with the SEC, but is rather due to the regulatory uncertainty towards digital assets in the U.S.

Still, she said that “the U.S. is a major market, and we believe it’s possible for the U.S. to emerge as a leader in driving innovation.” 

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