Every XRP Investor Should Keep an Eye on This Number in 2026

As an XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) investor, it's tempting to focus on old-school financial metrics such as the price per token or trading volumes. These figures have held relatively steady in 2025, after a big boost around the presidential election in November 2024. Since there are spot-price XRP exchange-traded funds (ETFs) these days, sophisticated investors might watch cash inflows into the leading Canary XRP ETF (NASDAQ: XRPC) fund.

But I'm much more interested in a different XRP metric. This cryptocurrency exists for the particular purpose of enabling fast, low-cost payments across international borders. There are a few secondary use cases, but cross-border transactions are the meat and potatoes of XRP investing.

So for true long-term investors, one figure stands head and shoulders above all the others. You should watch the daily number of XRP payments in 2026, as this figure sets the tone for XRP's real-world usage.

Image source: Getty Images.

What actually moves XRP's needle

Let me get more specific.

I'm not talking about the number of XRP transactions executed per day. That figure includes other transaction types such as ledger balance checks, account creation or deletion, setting up a new smart contract, or burning XRP tokens. The transaction count is much larger than the number of payments from one account to another. I mean, of course it is -- payments are just a smaller subset of the total transaction universe.

And I'm not that interested in the daily total value of XRP-based payments, either. Some payments are tiny person-to-person transactions and others are in the millions of dollars and involve large companies. So the average value per payment jumps around like a cricket on espresso.

As of Dec. 8, the average payment over the last 30 days carried $3,207 of monetary value. The daily number of transactions was quite steady around the 900,000 to 1,000,000 level (with significant dips on the weekends). Meanwhile, the total payment volume ranged from $396 million to $17 billion. The lowest-value day in this span saw a higher number of payments than the largest money-moving date -- but the average payment value was $417 instead of $18,086.

When XRP payments went absolutely bananas

To hammer home how volatile the average transaction value can be, please consider the case of Dec. 31, 2023.

The last day of 2023 was an unremarkable day for XRP investors. The open-market trading volume was mellow due to the holidays, and XRP's price held steady at $0.62 per token all day long.

But the on-chain data tells a different story. With a sky-high 6.0 million payments on the ledger that day, the total value sent was an unremarkable $275 million. That's less than $46 per transaction.

That jump was driven by a brief period of fee-free transactions, as thousands of hackers attempted to publish various digital data on the smallest fraction of XRP tokens. These penny-sized transactions were a low-budget spin on non-fungible tokens (NFTs), creating unique data packets on the XRP blockchain. But Ripple Labs quickly closed the data-adding feature. The system wasn't meant to power NFTs with minimal fees, after all.

Consistent growth beats random spikes

It would, of course, be nice to see these jumpy metrics calm down a bit. The volatile nature of XRP's payment metrics underscores the immature nature of this upstart payment system. The faux-NFT episode two years ago added another example of XRP's immature operation.

So the average payment value per transaction isn't very interesting, which makes the closely related total payment value (aka volume) per day less important, too. The number to watch is the daily number of payment transactions, which has trended lower in 2025 -- but at an elevated level after last year's elections.

I'm looking for sustained upward movement in this chart. Temporary spikes like the fake-NFT surge in December 2023 don't count. XRP can build real-world value over the long term by becoming the international payment system of choice for more people and companies.

Looking ahead to 2026, this metric will tell you whether XRP has truly broken through as a mainstream payment rail or remains stuck in crypto-speculation limbo. Watch for consistent daily payment counts above 2 million; doubling from last year's consistent plateau will show you that XRP has arrived in the mainstream financial world.

Anders Bylund has positions in XRP. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.