Ripple has secured a new strategic partnership in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as the country continues to position itself as a regional hub for digital assets and blockchain innovation. The company announced Tuesday that it is expanding its relationship with Zand, a UAE-based digital bank built around artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technology, to support the development of the digital economy through stablecoins and distributed ledger solutions. Expanded Deal for Ripple and Zand Under the partnership, Zand and Ripple will collaborate on a series of initiatives around Zand’s dirham-backed stablecoin, AEDZ, and Ripple’s US dollar stablecoin, RLUSD. According to both parties, the goal is to create new infrastructure and use cases that connect traditional financial services with on-chain systems within a regulated environment. Related reading: Bernstein Calls Bitcoin Crash a ‘Crisis of Confidence,’ Maintains $150,000 Goal Reece Merrick, Ripple’s managing director for the Middle East and Africa, said in a social media post that the deal builds on a previous payments partnership between the two companies. He explained that Ripple and Zand are now expanding their partnership to explore several areas, including support for RLUSD within Zand’s regulated digital asset custody platform, as well as direct liquidity solutions between RLUSD and AEDZ. XRPL Implementation in the UAE According to the official statement, the expanded partnership will also focus on exploring the feasibility of seamless liquidity between the two stablecoins and issuing AEDZ on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). Any deployment on XRPL would be accompanied by appropriate compliance standards, monitoring tools and risk management controls, the companies said. Related reading: Strategy Expands Bitcoin Holdings with $90 Million Purchase, Bitmine Follows Up with ETH Zand’s Chief Executive Officer, Michael Chan, said the bank sees stablecoins, blockchain technology and tokenization as key building blocks as traditional finance increasingly moves on-chain. He described the partnership with Ripple as an important milestone for the growth of the UAE’s digital asset ecosystem, adding that it could reshape how governments and businesses interact with secure and trusted blockchain-based solutions. At the time of writing, XRP was trading at $1.40. The country has suffered major losses of 26% and 33% respectively in the last fourteen and thirty days. This positions the fifth-largest cryptocurrency 61% below its all-time high of $3.65. Featured image from OpenArt, chart from TradingView.com
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