Ripple’s push to widen its role in global finance is drawing bolder forecasts after a run of acquisitions and licensing moves that have expanded the company beyond cross-border payments into brokerage, custody, stablecoins and treasury software. The latest claim came from crypto commentator Jake Claver, who argued Ripple could become the “Amazon of payments and banking infrastructure” by 2040 or 2050, a view that reflects growing enthusiasm around the company’s dealmaking but remains far from settled in a market still shaped by regulation, bank caution and strong competition.
What gives the argument more weight than a typical crypto prediction is the breadth of Ripple’s expansion over the past year. In April 2025, the company agreed to buy prime broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion, one of the largest deals in the sector. By October 2025, Ripple said the acquisition had closed and Hidden Road had been rebranded as Ripple Prime, giving the company a direct position in multi-asset prime brokerage and clearing. Reuters reported that Hidden Road was already processing about $3 trillion annually across financial markets and serving more than 300 institutional clients when the deal was announced.
Ripple followed that with a $200 million agreement in August 2025 to acquire Rail, a stablecoin-focused payments platform, and in October 2025 announced the $1 billion acquisition of treasury software provider GTreasury. Those deals pushed Ripple deeper into infrastructure used by institutions rather than retail crypto traders. The company’s own description of the GTreasury acquisition was telling: it framed the purchase as a move into the workflows of chief financial officers and corporate treasurers, linking digital assets to mainstream treasury operations rather than treating them as a parallel market.
By April 2026, Ripple was already using that treasury foothold to launch what it called a treasury management system with native digital asset capabilities. The company said the product was built on the GTreasury acquisition and that Ripple Treasury had facilitated $13 trillion in payments volume in 2025. That does not place Ripple anywhere near the scale or ubiquity of Amazon, but it does show that the company is trying to become a financial infrastructure stack rather than a single-product crypto firm.
The licensing strategy matters just as much as the acquisitions. In March 2026, Ripple said it would secure an Australian Financial Services License through the proposed acquisition of BC Payments Australia, expanding its regulated payments footprint in the Asia-Pacific region. That followed broader efforts to work within formal regulatory systems as crypto firms try to appeal to banks, payment companies and large enterprises that are unlikely to build on lightly supervised infrastructure.
Ripple has also benefited from a friendlier legal and political climate in the United States than it faced during the height of its dispute with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Reuters reported in March 2025 that the SEC would drop its appeal over the ruling that XRP sales on public exchanges were not securities transactions, although litigation over institutional sales and penalties continued before the case was later brought to an end in August 2025 with the $125 million fine and injunction left in place. That outcome removed a major overhang, but it did not deliver a clean sweep for Ripple.
That mixed legal record is one reason analysts and institutions are likely to treat grand forecasts with caution. Another is competition. Ripple is not building in an empty field. Stablecoin infrastructure is becoming crowded, with Circle, Tether, major banks, fintech groups and payments companies all competing to shape how money moves across borders and how tokenised dollars are used in settlement. Reuters noted when Ripple agreed to buy Rail that the company was trying to strengthen its position in stablecoin payments at a time when regulation was beginning to give that market a clearer framework.
There is also the question of whether hype around XRP sometimes outruns the evidence. Much of the language surrounding Ripple’s future is driven by crypto-native commentators whose forecasts have often proved optimistic. The stronger case for Ripple is not that it will dominate global banking in the way Amazon dominates e-commerce and cloud computing, but that it is assembling a broader institutional platform at a moment when digital asset payments, custody and treasury services are beginning to converge.
What gives the argument more weight than a typical crypto prediction is the breadth of Ripple’s expansion over the past year. In April 2025, the company agreed to buy prime broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion, one of the largest deals in the sector. By October 2025, Ripple said the acquisition had closed and Hidden Road had been rebranded as Ripple Prime, giving the company a direct position in multi-asset prime brokerage and clearing. Reuters reported that Hidden Road was already processing about $3 trillion annually across financial markets and serving more than 300 institutional clients when the deal was announced.
Ripple followed that with a $200 million agreement in August 2025 to acquire Rail, a stablecoin-focused payments platform, and in October 2025 announced the $1 billion acquisition of treasury software provider GTreasury. Those deals pushed Ripple deeper into infrastructure used by institutions rather than retail crypto traders. The company’s own description of the GTreasury acquisition was telling: it framed the purchase as a move into the workflows of chief financial officers and corporate treasurers, linking digital assets to mainstream treasury operations rather than treating them as a parallel market.
By April 2026, Ripple was already using that treasury foothold to launch what it called a treasury management system with native digital asset capabilities. The company said the product was built on the GTreasury acquisition and that Ripple Treasury had facilitated $13 trillion in payments volume in 2025. That does not place Ripple anywhere near the scale or ubiquity of Amazon, but it does show that the company is trying to become a financial infrastructure stack rather than a single-product crypto firm.
The licensing strategy matters just as much as the acquisitions. In March 2026, Ripple said it would secure an Australian Financial Services License through the proposed acquisition of BC Payments Australia, expanding its regulated payments footprint in the Asia-Pacific region. That followed broader efforts to work within formal regulatory systems as crypto firms try to appeal to banks, payment companies and large enterprises that are unlikely to build on lightly supervised infrastructure.
Ripple has also benefited from a friendlier legal and political climate in the United States than it faced during the height of its dispute with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Reuters reported in March 2025 that the SEC would drop its appeal over the ruling that XRP sales on public exchanges were not securities transactions, although litigation over institutional sales and penalties continued before the case was later brought to an end in August 2025 with the $125 million fine and injunction left in place. That outcome removed a major overhang, but it did not deliver a clean sweep for Ripple.
That mixed legal record is one reason analysts and institutions are likely to treat grand forecasts with caution. Another is competition. Ripple is not building in an empty field. Stablecoin infrastructure is becoming crowded, with Circle, Tether, major banks, fintech groups and payments companies all competing to shape how money moves across borders and how tokenised dollars are used in settlement. Reuters noted when Ripple agreed to buy Rail that the company was trying to strengthen its position in stablecoin payments at a time when regulation was beginning to give that market a clearer framework.
There is also the question of whether hype around XRP sometimes outruns the evidence. Much of the language surrounding Ripple’s future is driven by crypto-native commentators whose forecasts have often proved optimistic. The stronger case for Ripple is not that it will dominate global banking in the way Amazon dominates e-commerce and cloud computing, but that it is assembling a broader institutional platform at a moment when digital asset payments, custody and treasury services are beginning to converge.
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Cryptocurrency