RLUSD explained.

RLUSD is issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company, a Ripple subsidiary with a trust charter from the New York Department of Financial Services. It is a classic reserve-backed IOU: institutional clients mint and redeem at par, retail buys on the market, and a monthly attestation covers the reserve composition.

RLUSD lives on both the XRP Ledger and Ethereum. The ERC-20 version brings reach and liquidity; the XRP Ledger version settles in seconds for cents. Balances are not interchangeable without a bridge or an exchange, so always check the chain before sending.

Ripple targets cross-border business payments, where a stablecoin acts as a bridge currency, and settlement of tokenised assets on the same chain. For retail investors it is mostly a place to park dollars between trades.

Issuer and banking risk, as USDC showed in March 2023; freezing, because a supervised issuer can block addresses; thinner liquidity than USDT or USDC; and the practical risk of sending to the wrong chain or buying a look-alike token.

Under MiCA a single-currency stablecoin is an e-money token requiring an EU-authorised issuer with redemption at par, so EU availability depends on the structure Ripple builds. A dollar token also leaves European users with currency risk; EURC or EURe match the currency you actually settle in.