Ripple’s dollar-backed stablecoin, RLUSD, has secured a crucial regulatory foothold in the Middle East after receiving official recognition as an Accepted Fiat-Referenced Token within the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM).
The designation, granted by the ADGM’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA), means that firms licensed by the authority can now use RLUSD for regulated activities. This approval places Ripple’s stablecoin among a small, select group of digital assets permitted inside the ADGM’s tightly governed financial system.
For Ripple, this marks a material expansion into the Middle East, a region where banks and payment institutions have shown a faster pace of adopting tokenized settlement solutions compared to their counterparts in the U.S. and Europe.
Ripple is actively positioning RLUSD as a regulated settlement asset for use in payment corridors and capital-market applications, aiming to circumvent the regulatory uncertainty that has impacted competitors in other global markets.
Launched in late 2024 under a New York DFS trust charter, RLUSD has rapidly grown, surpassing $1.2 billion in circulating supply. According to CoinGecko data, this makes it the 10th-largest stablecoin by market capitalization, driven by rising institutional demand for a dollar token with clear reserve rules and defined redemption rights.
