Ripple News: Uphold Says XRP Ledger Has ‘A Leg Up’ In Bank Adoption Race

Nancy Beaton, President of the US for digital asset platform Uphold, said traditional banking is in the middle of a structural move toward blockchain infrastructure, and argued that partnerships between companies like Ripple and Uphold are what will actually carry the financial system there.

“There’s no question that the traditional banking system and financial system is moving to the blockchain,” Beaton said. “I think it’s going to take partnerships like Ripple, like Uphold, like platform providers in order to move us in that direction, because that is clearly where the new financial system is headed.”

From Retail Wallet to Enterprise Infrastructure

Beaton described Uphold’s evolution beyond its retail wallet, which lets users buy, sell, hold, trade and earn on digital assets, toward a fully API-enabled platform built for enterprise and institutional clients. That shift lets banks and financial institutions plug directly into Uphold’s infrastructure to offer digital asset services to their own customers without building the technology from scratch.

She said Uphold works continuously with Ripple and the XRP Ledger, and pointed to near-term collaboration with partners including Flare and Firelight on the enterprise side, aimed at giving financial institutions a complete, end-to-end pathway into digital assets.

Why Beaton Thinks Blockchain Beats Legacy Rails

Beaton framed blockchain adoption as fundamentally an operational efficiency story rather than a speculative one. She contrasted today’s near-instant, low-cost blockchain transfers with the traditional system, where international money transfers historically took two to three days to settle and could cost up to 10% in fees. “You are spending 10% to send money overseas. Today, that is not the case,” Beaton said. “You can send money overseas for pennies.”

Positioning XRP as a First Mover

Beaton argued that XRP and the XRP Ledger’s early positioning gives them a structural advantage in guiding that transition, framing the broader vision as one where sending money becomes as routine as sending an email, portfolios earn yield automatically, and crypto can serve as collateral without traditional credit checks, remaking how everyday financial activity works.