- Ripple confirmed to Bitcoin.com News that it is no longer a member of a Bank for International Settlements (BIS) cross-border payments task force it joined in 2023.
- The confirmation follows a BIS paper on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) that raised questions among crypto industry observers.
- None of the parties involved have explained how the BIS research and Ripple’s departure from the task force relate to one another.
- XRP traded near $1.5, up 0.14% on the day, while bitcoin changed hands around $83,024.57, down 0.57%.
Ripple has confirmed that it is no longer a member of a Bank for International Settlements task force focused on cross-border payments, a group the company joined in 2023. The confirmation, provided to Bitcoin.com News, closes off a period of speculation about the firm’s standing within one of the most influential institutions shaping global payment standards. The disclosure arrives just weeks after the BIS published a paper examining the XRP Ledger, the distributed network closely tied to Ripple’s payment products.
The timing has drawn attention because the two developments — the research paper and the membership change — sit awkwardly alongside each other. A BIS paper on the XRP Ledger would ordinarily signal institutional interest in the technology, yet Ripple’s absence from the cross-border payments task force suggests its formal role in BIS-led work has ended. Neither the BIS nor Ripple has offered a detailed account of how the research effort and the task force membership intersect, leaving observers to draw their own conclusions.
Why the BIS Relationship Matters
The Bank for International Settlements functions as a coordinating body for the world’s central banks, and its working groups carry weight well beyond their immediate membership. Participation in a cross-border payments task force places a firm inside conversations about settlement infrastructure, interoperability, and the standards that could govern international transfers for years to come. For Ripple, whose core business proposition rests on faster and cheaper cross-border settlement, a seat at that table carried both symbolic and practical value.
That makes the loss of the seat notable, even if the practical consequences are difficult to quantify. Ripple’s technology and the XRP Ledger can continue to operate and attract users without a formal BIS role. But the departure removes a channel through which the company could shape or anticipate regulatory and technical direction at the multilateral level. It also hands ammunition to skeptics who argue that Ripple’s institutional traction has not matched its public messaging.
Market Reaction and the XRP Ledger Question
What Remains Unanswered
The central unresolved question is why the BIS chose to publish research on the XRP Ledger while Ripple no longer sits on the cross-border payments task force. Possible explanations include a routine rotation of members, a shift in the task force’s mandate, or a deliberate separation between research and formal participation. None of these has been confirmed. Without statements from the BIS or additional detail from Ripple, the sequence of events remains open to interpretation.
For now, the confirmed facts are narrow: Ripple joined the task force in 2023, it is no longer a member, and a BIS paper on the XRP Ledger appeared in the weeks before that confirmation became public. How those threads connect — and whether the change signals anything about Ripple’s broader standing with central banks and multilateral institutions — is a question the involved parties have so far declined to answer.
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