Ripple is deepening its presence in the Middle East through a new partnership with Bahrain Fintech Bay (BFB), the kingdom’s leading fintech incubator and blockchain ecosystem builder.
The collaboration, announced on Oct. 9 strengthens Ripple’s position in a region that is quickly becoming a testing ground for digital asset infrastructure.
Bahrain has long positioned itself as a fintech gateway to the Gulf. In 2019, the country’s central bank was among the first in the world to issue comprehensive regulations for crypto assets, attracting early pilots from companies like Binance.
By joining forces with BFB, Ripple will gain access to an innovation hub that connects government regulators, banks and fintechs experimenting with cross-border remittance technologies.
This gives it a strategic position in the Middle East market, where digital payments are growing rapidly but remain limited by compliance costs, exchange rate risks and patchy interoperability between national regimes.
Meanwhile, the partnership with Bahrain complements Ripple’s previous regulatory victory in Dubai, where it was granted a payments license by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) in March.
These jurisdictions anchor a two-hub strategy to connect the Gulf’s major financial centers under a shared digital asset framework in the Middle East.
How does this benefit Ripple’s XRP and RLUSD?
According to the World Bank factsThe Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region together processed more than $58 billion in remittances last year.
These massive multi-currency flows represent a key opportunity that Ripple’s technology is built to solve.
Through its XRP-based settlement network, Ripple allows institutions to move value instantly without maintaining expensive, pre-funded accounts. This results in cheaper and faster cross-border transfers in corridors that traditionally take days.
If the Brad Garlinghouse-led company were to capture just 2% of the region’s $58 billion remittances market, it would translate into more than $1 billion in annual on-chain transactions, potentially driving liquidity demand for XRP.
However, the opportunities in the region come with an associated complexity. Despite Bahrain’s openness, most MENA jurisdictions still impose strict controls on cross-border money transfers.
The differing anti-money laundering and know-your-customer frameworks create overlapping requirements that can delay settlements and increase operational costs, especially for smaller providers.
Ripple’s approach to embed auditable, real-time transaction data directly into the chain provides regulators with a unified view of money movement, potentially streamlining supervision while maintaining transparency. If implemented at scale, this structure could reconcile the region’s fragmented compliance systems with the global reach of digital finance.
Insisting on transfers
The move toward digitized money transfers has also led to increased cybersecurity and fraud risks. Phishing, identity theft and data breaches have tested consumer confidence in mobile and online transfers.
Ripple’s institutional-level custody framework, layered with advanced encryption and blockchain immutability, could provide the certainty regional banks need to expand digital asset services without compromising security.
The volatility of exchange rates adds an extra layer of uncertainty. Currency fluctuations routinely erode the real value of remittances, reducing the amount families ultimately receive. Ripple USD (RLUSD), a US dollar-backed stablecoin with a market capitalization of approximately $790 million, provides a stabilizing mechanism for regional transactions.
By linking RLUSD to XRP as a bridge asset, institutions can perform near-instant conversions between local currency and dollar settlements, protecting users from currency fluctuations and improving predictability for both senders and recipients.
Meanwhile, competition in the remittance sector remains fierce. Established players like Western Union and MoneyGram are facing increasing pressure from digital-first challengers like Wise and Remitly, which have reshaped consumer expectations for fees and speed.
Ripple’s advantage lies not in its retail front-ends, but in building the institutional infrastructure that underpins it. By equipping banks and licensed fintechs with the same efficiency as consumer-facing platforms, within a compliant framework, Ripple’s network of XRP-driven settlements could transform into a standard component of the regional financial infrastructure, rather than a speculative experiment.
