XRP News: Ripple Flags Turkey as Digital Assets Hub With Garanti BBVA Custody and RLUSD Rails
Ripple is spotlighting an already-live footprint in Turkey as the country cements its position among the world’s largest crypto markets.
A fresh Ripple Insights piece published October 5 frames the nation not as a speculative trading hub, but as a practical use-case market driven by real currency pressure.
Retail crypto trading volume rose 7% year-on-year to roughly $40 billion in early 2026, pushing Turkey from seventh to fifth in a global adoption ranking Ripple cites.
Bank-Grade Custody and RLUSD Rails Now Live Across Turkish Platforms
Garanti BBVA Kripto, the digital-assets subsidiary of Turkey’s second-largest private bank, already runs on Ripple Custody.
What started as a 2023 pilot has since rolled out to the bank’s full customer base. That covers digital-asset storage, transfer, and on/off-ramp access for BTC, ETH, and XRP. Ripple says it is the only infrastructure provider to have met the Capital Markets Board’s (CMB) institutional-custodian bar.
The same custody infrastructure is now live at South Africa’s Absa CIB, Ripple Custody Bank Rollout Gains Another Institutional Name, confirming the stack is expanding across emerging markets simultaneously.
On the stablecoin side, Ripple’s RLUSD is now available on Turkish platforms including BiLira, Bitlo, and Bitexen.
The June 2026 RLUSD Expansion Into Turkey Via BiLira, Bitexen and Bitlo formalized those distribution partnerships.
Reece Merrick, Ripple’s Managing Director for Middle East and Africa, explained the appeal plainly. “When a market is dealing with currency pressure at the scale Turkey has faced, people don’t turn to crypto for trading purposes, they turn to it to protect what they have,” he said.
He added that regulated dollar-backed liquidity is why RLUSD “matters here in a very practical way.”
RLUSD Market Cap Near $2.5B ATH reached in September 2026, underscores that the stablecoin’s growth is broader than any single market. Turkey is an incremental distribution win, not the sole driver.
Turkey’s 2024 Crypto Law Creates the Compliance Backbone Ripple Is Betting On
This is not a market Ripple is entering cold. Law No. 7518, passed in July 2024, gave the CMB authority over crypto assets.
Secondary rules in March 2025 added licensing, minimum capital thresholds, and AML obligations for all crypto asset service providers.
Custody-specific rules took effect in June 2026, the same month RLUSD landed on local exchanges. That regulatory sequence matters.
A bank partnership inside a licensed regime is more defensible than an exchange listing in a grey market. Ripple is also building a broader tokenization stack in parallel.
Ripple and SettleMint Partner to Boost Tokenization Across TradFi, announced in September 2026, shows the infrastructure ambition extends well beyond custody alone.
Investors should separate the two product lines. Custody is recurring infrastructure revenue tied to a major Turkish bank.
RLUSD is the dollar rail competing with USDT and USDC in a high-velocity, lira-pressured market. Neither automatically lifts XRP demand.
Ripple Eyes $155T Cross-Border Market as XRP Bulls Revive SWIFT Replacement Narrative, published September 28, breaks down how XRP and RLUSD occupy distinct roles within Ripple’s settlement strategy.
Binance Expands RLUSD Rewards and Support adds another distribution pillar as global supply continues to grow.
