The extension of the custody partnership with garanti bbva kripto, a major turkish banking giant, signifies increasing institutional trust and mass-scale adoption of ripple's technology. this validates ripple's strategy post-metaco acquisition and expands its reach in a key emerging market for digital assets.
The information is derived from an official statement by ripple's managing director, reece merrick, and details a long-standing, expanding corporate partnership with a major banking group (bbva). the article provides significant historical context, confirming the legitimacy and depth of the relationship.
Increased institutional adoption and validation of ripple's enterprise solutions, especially with a major bank in a high-inflation market like turkey, strengthens ripple's overall business model. this enhances the institutional credibility and long-term utility proposition for xrp, despite the news not directly focusing on xrp's payment utility.
The partnership is described as 'long-lasting,' 'nearly a decade' in the making, and moving 'from pilot to mass scale,' with global integration planned for bbva spain by september 2025. this indicates a sustained, long-term positive impact on ripple's ecosystem and xrp's institutional standing.
Cover image via U.Today Read U.TODAY on Google News From pilot to mass scale A long-lasting partnership Advertisement Garanti BBVA Kripto, the digital asset subsidiary of Turkey’s second-largest private bank, has extended its custody partnership with Ripple. According to a statement from Ripple Managing Director Reece Merrick, Garanti BBVA will continue to use Ripple’s institutional-grade custody technology to secure major assets, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and XRP. From pilot to mass scale Garanti BBVA Kripto initially launched with a focus on a smaller cohort of 14,000 early adopters in late 2024. HOT Stories Turkish Banking Giant Extends Ripple Partnership U.Today Crypto Review: XRP Prints Double Bottom, Shiba Inu (SHIB) Uptrend Available, Bitcoin (BTC) 'Now or Never' Price Moment U.Today Crypto Digest: Ripple Snatches Major Partnership in $5 Trillion Pool, XRP Defies Death Sentence, Shiba Inu Avoids BTC Selling Pressure Powerful Pro-Bitcoin BlackRock Exec Could Become Next Fed Chair "This renewal is a massive vote of confidence in our joint vision for secure, compliant digital asset infrastructure," Merrick noted. Advertisement card For Ripple, the deal expands on the success of its 2023 acquisition of custody firm Metaco. The decision to combine Ripple’s custody software with IBM’s LinuxONE hardware security modules (HSM), Garanti BBVA is effectively betting that institutional-grade "cold storage" is the only viable path to regulatory compliance in the G20 market. Advertisement A long-lasting partnership The relationship between Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) and Ripple is one of the oldest and most consistent partnerships in the enterprise blockchain space. It has already spanned nearly a decade of pilots, equity investments, and commercial rollouts. BBVA was already actively testing Ripple’s underlying technology back in 2017. In April 2017, BBVA became the first Tier-1 European bank to complete a real-money international transfer using Ripple’s distributed ledger technology (DLT). In June 2021, BBVA Switzerland launched a commercial Bitcoin trading and custody service for private banking clients. Crucially, the bank selected Metaco, a Swiss-based custody provider, to build its "Harmonize" orchestration platform. This selection laid the groundwork for the future relationship. Of course, Metaco would later become the "custody arm" of Ripple. In 2023, Garanti BBVA (the Turkish arm) launched its own digital asset subsidiary, Garanti BBVA Kripto, to serve the high-inflation Turkish market where crypto adoption was skyrocketing. In October 2024, Garanti BBVA formally announced a tripartite partnership with Ripple and IBM. The deal saw the bank utilizing Ripple (Metaco) for key management and governance, secured inside IBM’s hyper-secure LinuxONE servers. By September 2025, the partnership had gone global. Ripple announced that BBVA Spain, the parent group, would also integrate Ripple Custody. #Ripple News