Ripple Surveyed 1,000 Finance Leaders: 74% Say Stablecoins Are Now a Treasury Management Tool

A Ripple survey of more than 1,000 global finance leaders released on March 20 shows stablecoins have crossed from speculative asset to operational infrastructure, with 74% of respondents identifying them as the most compelling tool for improving cash-flow efficiency and unlocking working capital trapped in traditional settlement delays.

What the Survey Found

The data covers banks, asset managers, fintechs, and corporates across global markets. Three findings stand out as structurally significant rather than directionally interesting.

The first is the competitive necessity reading. Seventy-two percent of finance leaders believe offering digital asset solutions is now required to remain competitive. That framing reflects a shift from early adoption to baseline expectation. When nearly three quarters of surveyed finance leaders across multiple institution types agree that digital assets are a competitive requirement, the conversation has moved past the question of whether to adopt and into the question of how fast.

The second is the stablecoin treasury finding. Seventy-four percent identified stablecoins as the most compelling digital asset use case specifically for cash-flow efficiency and trapped working capital. Ripple estimates over $700 billion in working capital is currently locked in traditional settlement delays at any given time. Stablecoins that settle in near-real time and operate continuously remove that constraint. The survey respondents are not describing stablecoins as a payments novelty. They are describing them as a treasury management instrument that addresses a $700 billion inefficiency in the existing financial system.

The third is the operational integration figure. Nearly 31% of fintechs already use stablecoins to collect customer payments and 29% accept them directly for settled transactions. Those are not pilot program statistics. They reflect production-level deployment at meaningful scale across a sector that has historically been faster to adopt new financial infrastructure than traditional banks.

The Custody Requirement

Eighty-nine percent of institutions ranked secure digital asset custody as their top requirement when selecting a tokenization partner. That figure is the most practically important finding in the survey for anyone building or evaluating institutional digital asset infrastructure. Yield, settlement speed, and regulatory compliance all matter. Custody confidence is what the overwhelming majority of institutions name first.

That priority is consistent with the broader institutional infrastructure developments covered across this week’s reporting. The Nasdaq tokenized equity pilot, the SEC and CFTC digital commodity classifications, and the Coinbase Bitcoin Yield Fund launch on Base all share a common thread: custody arrangements with regulated, recognized counterparties are the foundation on which everything else is built.

What Ripple Is Selling Into This Demand

The survey was commissioned and released by Ripple, which has a direct commercial interest in the findings. That context does not invalidate the data but should inform how the conclusions are read. Ripple launched its own regulated treasury platform in January 2026 following its $1 billion acquisition of GTreasury, allowing firms to manage cash and digital assets in a single system. The survey’s emphasis on stablecoins as treasury tools and custody as the top institutional priority maps directly onto Ripple’s current product positioning.

On March 19, Ripple announced a major Brazil expansion offering custody, treasury management, and its RLUSD stablecoin to local fintechs including Braza Bank and Nomad. That geographic push aligns with the survey’s framing of stablecoins as tools for cross-border liquidity management, particularly in markets where traditional banking infrastructure introduces significant settlement friction.

The Broader Picture

The survey arrives in the same week that the SEC and CFTC formally classified major digital assets as commodities, Amundi launched Europe’s first on-chain mutual fund, and the tokenized government debt market surpassed $1.8 billion. Ripple’s data point of 72% of finance leaders treating digital assets as a competitive necessity reflects conditions that the rest of this week’s institutional developments are actively creating.

The final batch for XRP ETF deadline on March 27 adds a near-term regulatory catalyst to the Ripple ecosystem specifically. Whether the stablecoin treasury adoption trend the survey documents translates into price-relevant demand for XRP and RLUSD depends on how quickly the institutional integration moves from stated priority to deployed infrastructure.

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