Meritz Securities partners with Ripple to study digital asset custody for South Korea

• Meritz Securities signed the agreement with Ripple on October 1 and announced it on October 7.
• The partnership will study Ripple Custody and tokenization tools to serve South Korea’s capital markets.
• XRP makes up 20.7% of South Korean investors in their twenties’ crypto portfolios, versus a combined 17.5% for Bitcoin and Ethereum.

• 20.7% share of XRP in Korean twentysomethings’ crypto holdings
• 17.5% combined Bitcoin and Ethereum share in the same group
• 90+ countries where Ripple already runs custody infrastructure

Meritz Securities said it signed a strategic agreement with Ripple to introduce digital assets to the domestic market, according to the announcement from the brokerage. The two firms will jointly study how Ripple Custody, an institutional platform that lets banks and funds hold crypto and tokenized assets on clients’ behalf, and Ripple’s tokenization infrastructure could serve South Korea’s capital markets. The deal, first reported by CryptoPotato, was signed October 1 and disclosed six days later.

Jang Won-jae and Monica Long Sign at Yeouido Headquarters

The ceremony took place at Meritz Securities’ headquarters in Seoul’s Yeouido financial district, with chief executive Jang Won-jae and Ripple President Monica Long attending alongside other officials. Both companies plan to keep initial cooperation within South Korea’s existing securities business rules, expanding it in stages as the country’s digital asset framework develops.

Meritz is separately reviewing spot exchange-traded funds, fractional investment products, security token offerings, trading platforms and won-denominated stablecoins, positioning the firm ahead of anticipated regulatory changes.

Ripple, founded in 2012 and headquartered in San Francisco, operates enterprise blockchain solutions in more than 90 countries.

The company would explore how digital asset infrastructure can support the continued development of Korea’s capital markets.

The move echoes a wider push among regulators to formalize custody arrangements for institutions holding digital assets, a question the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has tackled directly in its own proposed crypto custody rule for investment advisers. Meritz’s staged approach, working inside current rules before expanding, mirrors that same wait-for-the-framework caution seen among brokerages elsewhere in Asia.

K Bank and Kyobo Life Already Run Ripple Pilots in Korea

Ripple has been building out its Korean footprint through parallel deals this year. Internet-only lender K Bank moved beyond initial blockchain remittance trials in April, testing whether Ripple’s network can make cross-border transfers faster and cheaper, with a second proof-of-concept phase covering account integration and on-chain transfer tests with partners in the UAE and Thailand.

K Bank also plans to replace its in-house wallet with Ripple’s software-as-a-service Palisade wallet in the next phase. Separately, Ripple has worked with Kyobo Life Insurance on tokenized government bond transactions.

Retail demand underlines the stakes. XRP accounts for 20.7% of crypto holdings among South Korean investors in their twenties, 3.2 percentage points ahead of the combined 17.5% share held by Bitcoin and Ethereum in the same age group, a gap that gives Ripple a built-in retail base as it courts institutional partners like Meritz.

Ripple Also Runs Settlement Deals With CSD BR and Brevan Howard

Ripple’s institutional push extends beyond Korea. The company partnered with Brazil’s central securities depository, CSD BR, to use the XRP Ledger for recording and auditing tokenized financial assets, with the first phase covering investment fund shares from BTG Pactual. The system will run alongside CSD BR’s existing infrastructure, giving approved corporate and banking clients near-real-time access to blockchain records, an institutional settlement model similar in spirit to the Solana Foundation’s new DvP escrow program for institutional settlement.

Ripple has also deepened ties with investment manager Brevan Howard, which will use Ripple Prime for multi-asset prime brokerage, clearing and financing. Both deals point to Ripple building settlement rails for regulated institutions rather than retail exchanges.

The CCS read. We read this less as a Korea story and more as Ripple assembling a custody and settlement stack that regulated brokerages can plug into once local rules catch up. Meritz gets to pre-build the plumbing without regulatory exposure today, and Ripple banks another reference client it can point to when South Korea’s digital asset framework finally takes shape.

What remains open is the timeline for South Korea’s digital asset framework itself, the trigger both firms say will determine how far the Meritz-Ripple partnership expands beyond custody and tokenization pilots. Neither company has set a date for moving past the current securities-rule-constrained phase.