Ripple Expands African Footprint Through Strategic Partnership with Absa Bank

Ripple’s global custody network now spans multiple continents, with Absa becoming its first major institutional partner in Africa.

Ripple has announced a strategic partnership with South Africa’s Absa Bank. Under the agreement, Absa will integrate Ripple’s custody technology to manage tokenized assets, including cryptocurrencies.

With this partnership, Absa gains access to Ripple’s institutional-grade technology, while the latter advances its broader mission of integrating digital assets into mainstream financial operations across Africa.

Institutional Digital Asset Custody

The latest development marks Ripple’s first major custody collaboration in Africa, which comes at a time of increasing demand among emerging-market financial institutions for compliant digital asset solutions.

The partnership strengthens the San Francisco-headquartered company’s footprint on the continent, building on earlier initiatives such as supporting Africa-focused payments platform Chipper Cash with crypto-enabled payment tools and facilitating the launch of its USD-backed stablecoin RLUSD in the region.

In an official statement, Robyn Lawson, Head of Digital Product, Custody, at Absa Corporate and Investment Banking, said,

“As we continue to innovate and respond to the evolving financial ecosystem, we recognise the importance of providing our customers with secure, compliant, and robust custody solutions for their digital assets. Ripple’s custody solution allows us to leverage proven and trusted technology that meets the highest security and operational standards. Together, we can deliver the next generation of financial infrastructure to our customers.”

The company’s global custody network now spans Europe, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Africa, and serves financial institutions navigating the landscape of blockchain and tokenized assets.

Ripple’s 2025 New Value Report revealed that 64% of finance leaders in the Middle East and Africa cite faster payments and settlement times as an important factor for adopting blockchain-based currencies in cross-border flows.

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Other Key Developments

The move follows Ripple’s partnership with Bahrain Fintech Bay last week to advance Bahrain’s digital assets ecosystem. The main objective behind this is to focus on developing proofs-of-concept and pilot projects in blockchain, cross-border payments, digital assets, stablecoins, and tokenization. Ripple and BFB also plan to drive knowledge initiatives through educational programs and accelerators, while actively participating in local ecosystem events.

As reported by CryptoPotato earlier, Ripple partnered with Immunefi to strengthen the security of its XRPL Lending Protocol to launch a global “Attackathon” with a $200,000 prize pool. Top Web3 security researchers were invited to identify vulnerabilities ahead of the protocol’s validator vote. The initiative also offers targeted XRPL training through the Attackathon Academy.