Ripple Custody gains traction with European banks

Ripple says Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s largest banking group, has begun using Ripple Custody for its digital asset initiatives. The company published platform details on April 15 and reiterated its position on custody in a post on April 27 by Cassie Craddock, managing director for the U.K. and Europe at Ripple.

Ripple describes the custody platform as an API-driven, modular system that links with existing banking infrastructure. The company lists secure wallet deployment, distributed key management, customizable approval controls, transaction compliance screening, stablecoin payment support and tokenization across multiple blockchains among the platform’s capabilities.

On April 15 Ripple added integrations with Chainalysis for transaction monitoring, Securosys for cloud-based hardware security module services, Figment for institutional staking and Palisade for wallet infrastructure enhancements. Ripple says these integrations place compliance and governance inside custody workflows rather than relying on separate systems.

Ripple describes cloud-based HSM custody as a way for institutions to manage cryptographic keys without maintaining physical hardware on site. The company says the integrated staking option lets banks offer yield-generating services while keeping assets under custody controls. Ripple also states banks can apply existing approval processes and risk rules to on-chain activity within the custody environment.

In a post on April 27, Craddock wrote: “A clear signal of where European institutional adoption is heading, as well as the standard of infrastructure required to get there.” She added: “The next phase won’t be defined by experimentation; it will be defined by operational maturity. Custody is where that starts.”

Ripple also noted work outside Europe, including a collaboration with Kyobo Life Insurance in South Korea to explore custody and on-chain settlement infrastructure. Industry participants have focused on custody as the control layer for digital assets inside regulated institutions. By combining transaction screening, key management and staking in one workflow, providers intend to reduce the number of separate vendors and manual handoffs needed to operate at scale.