Ripple and SettleMint have partnered to offer digital asset custody and lifecycle management for financial institutions in Asia Pacific.
The integration is intended to give regulated financial institutions a single, connected system to custody, issue, and manage tokenised assets throughout their lifecycle, rather than relying on separate vendors for each function.
Combining custody and lifecycle management
Ripple Custody provides digital asset custody infrastructure for banks, fintechs, and corporates. Over the past year, the company has expanded this offering through partnerships with Securosys and Figment, an integration with Chainalysis, and the acquisition of Palisade.
SettleMint's DALP, developed by the Belgium-based company, is described as a composable digital asset lifecycle platform built for regulated financial institutions, market infrastructure operators, and sovereign entities. In addition, the platform is already deployed across production and pre-production programmes in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific, supporting the design, issuance, and management of tokenised real-world assets. According to the companies, DALP functions as a governed control plane covering issuance, compliance, custody, settlement, and servicing on one platform, aiming to reduce reconciliation gaps and ease the transition from pilot projects to production.
Through the partnership, the two platforms are positioned to jointly cover custody, issuance, compliance, and servicing for institutions operating under strict regulatory requirements, including compliance and permissioning controls.
The move comes as tokenisation gains attention across the banking sector. A Boston Consulting Group report titled 'The Future of Digital Assets', published in May 2026, projected that tokenised real-world assets could reach USD 88 trillion by 2035. The same report indicated that banks failing to adapt to this shift could face a 30% reduction in profits by 2035, while suggesting that tokenised products could allow banks to move from traditional intermediation toward infrastructure orchestration, generating revenue through tokenised funds, automated collateral mobility, and custody services.
Rollout plans
Ripple and SettleMint have already launched the partnership in Asia, with plans to extend the offering to other markets as institutional demand develops.
Commenting on the announcement, Fiona Murray, Managing Director, Asia Pacific at Ripple, noted that financial institutions in the region are seeking ways to deploy digital assets without assembling separate solutions for custody, issuance, and governance, positioning the partnership as a foundation institutions can build on. Adam Popat, CEO of SettleMint, said that combining custody and lifecycle management into a single system reflects the broader shift of capital markets toward on-chain operations, and that the partnership is intended to bring this combined offering to regulated markets globally.
