Ripple sets bold five-year target to capture SWIFT transaction volume with XRP

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has predicted that XRP could take up to 14% of interbank messaging platform SWIFT transaction volume in the next five years. Garlinghouse shared this projection at the recent XRPL Apex Conference in Singapore.

The CEO said this in response to an interviewer’s question at the event. According to him, SWIFT today is premised on messaging and liquidity. With the liquidity being owned by banks, he believes XRP can supplant that with crypto liquidity.

He said:

“There are two parts to SWIFT today: messaging and liquidity. The banks own liquidity. I think less about the messaging and more about liquidity. If you’re driving all the liquidity, it is good for XRP… so I’ll say five years, 14%.”

Garlinghouse’s comments highlight how Ripple is counting on using crypto liquidity to gain market share in the cross-border payments sector. With its approach, the firm expects that its ability to offer faster and cheaper transactions that leverage blockchain technology will be enough to take market share from SWIFT.

Currently, SWIFT powers the majority of all international transactions. Interestingly, there have been reports of a potential partnership between Ripple and SWIFT that could integrate XRP with the platform. However, Ripple’s moves suggest it is more likely to position itself as a competitor.

XRPL EVM sidechain to launch soon

Meanwhile, talks at the XRPL APEX were not restricted to Ripple’s ambitions for cross-border payments, with the company’s CTO David Schwartz also announcing a couple of developments within the XRPL ecosystem.

The biggest update was that the XRPL Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) sidechain will launch in Q2 of 2025. The product Ripple developed in partnership with Peersyst already has its testnet active since March 31, with over 80 projects already deployed on the testnet.

Given that June is the last month of Q2, it is expected that Ripple could launch the sidechain sometime this month. That could be a major boost for activity on XRPL by allowing Ethereum-compatible smart contracts and decentralized applications on XRPL.

According to Ripple, over 6 million active wallets are on the network, with a lifetime transaction volume of around 33 billion. However, it could use a boost in DeFi transactions, with payments currently dominating on-chain network activity.

Interestingly, XRPL is already primed to see more activity with Ondo Finance, which is finally launching its OUSG tokenized US treasuries product on the network. This comes after the real-world assets tokenization protocol announced the plan in January. Users can mint and redeem OUSG on XRPL using Ripple stablecoin RLUSD.

Other announcements on the first day of APEX include the news that publicly trading Vivo Power will deploy $100 million in XRP to the Flare ecosystem to generate yield and the upgrade that allows XRPL to support Dynamic NFTs.

XRP is down 3% despite conference optimism

Meanwhile, the developments announced at the XRPL APEX did nothing for the XRP price over the last 24 hours. According to CoinMarketCap, the token is down almost 3.5% today, falling to $2.244.

This decline is likely due to the general fall in the price of crypto assets after Bitcoin slipped from over $110,000 to $107,000, causing almost all other tokens to also record a slump. XRP could not buck the trend despite the positive sentiments expected from its conference.

With its recent decline, the token has been down 3.35% year-to-date. This best describes how 2025 has been for XRP, with the token steadying around above $2 and struggling to see any major gains.

Nevertheless, the XRPL APEX is a three-day event set to end by June 12, so many positive updates to the ecosystem could still be announced. XRP holders will be counting on such to boost the token value.

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