The collaboration between American Express (Amex) and Ripple goes back to 2017, when the two companies announced a deal for providing faster cross-border payments between the U.K. and the U.S. Since then, in the realm of financial technology, this marked a major traditional financial player leveraging blockchain technology for international payments. However, let’s delve into what this partnership did and did not involve:

This collaboration with Ripple’s blockchain technology will make cross-border payments faster and much more efficient. RippleNet is a decentralized network connecting banks, payment providers, and other financial institutions for the purpose of transferring money in almost real time and at a lower cost compared to traditional SWIFT-based systems.

The critical point arising from here is that this partnership involved the use of RippleNet, but XRP was not directly involved. At this time, Ripple provided two major solutions: RippleNet for secure and fast money transfer, and XRP, the cryptocurrency used as a bridge currency to facilitate transactions. In this instance, it was American Express’ FX International Payments service-a platform that applied Ripple’s blockchain to settle payments between the U.K. and the U.S.-and it did not involve XRP. Ripple’s blockchain technology was the infrastructure on which the facilitation of the payment was based, but XRP, as the settlement currency, was not used in that process.

The aim was to promote efficiency and cut costs of the remittance corridor between the U.S. and the U.K., which has long been slow and costly due to intermediaries and obsolete banking infrastructure.

Following 2017, American Express and Ripple did not announce any further major collaborations, nor did they publicly say that they would move to use XRP in payments. This has let many in the XRP community speculate about the potential for Ripple’s digital asset to be adopted on a broader scale in the financial industry.

While Ripple continued its path of scaling blockchain technology and use cases, known as RippleNet, across the world, no official partnership between Ripple and American Express came into being other than the above FXIP project. As time went on, XRP remained an optional choice for the institutions that adopted RippleNet; many major financial institutions, including Amex, did not go on to actively integrate the XRP as a settlement mechanism. Instead, they would continue with the use of Ripple’s blockchain technology without having to rely on the cryptocurrency itself.

The Speculation and Misleading Claims

Over the years, several rumors and speculations have emerged, particularly in the crypto space, on the possible revival of the Ripple-Amex partnership with XRP involved.

Several of these rumors have been fanned by misleading articles and social media posts. Many online sources, especially those in the XRP community, spread information suggesting that American Express was going to use XRP for cross-border payments or entered into a new partnership with Ripple.

These rumors usually had their origin in some speculative posts or old news and then went on to get popular among crypto investors. For example, people may have shared old photos of the American Express headquarters with claims of “new collaborations, or linked them to XRP projects without any verification.

Some websites have leveraged these rumors to hawk “Real Token” or other crypto projects in attempts to manipulate the price of XRP or otherwise draw attention to unrelated projects. Such maneuvers have surface-level similarities with tactics employed by scams or hype vehicles designed to inflate the value of a few baseless tokens sans real market buy-in.

In fact, there was no official confirmation by American Express and Ripple that they confirmed a new partnership or the use of XRP in these speculative reports. The official position taken by both firms has always been that their partnership-the same as it was back in 2017-is limited to blockchain technology and XRP has not been implemented into their operations in any meaningful capacity.

The SEC Lawsuit and Ripple’s Recovery

SEC lawsuit against Ripple and the developments, such as the partial victory in 2023, were major news covered in outlets like The Block, CoinTelegraph, and Bloomberg.

Ripple faced a lawsuit from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on charges of selling XRP as an unregistered security. This was a lawsuit filed in 2020, which brought massive uncertainty into the future of XRP as both a cryptocurrency and a tool for financial institutions. Many companies and financial institutions became wary of using XRP because of this uncertainty.

However, Ripple secured a partial victory in 2023 when a US court ruled that XRP was not a security in the context of being sold on exchanges. This gave the required clarity to Ripple and its investors and allowed the company to get back to business as usual in both the financial and crypto sectors.

Although this is the case, the major financial institutions, including American Express, have not widely adopted XRP. While Ripple has continued pursuing partnerships with smaller and medium-sized institutions focused on remittances and cross-border payments, large banks have been much more skeptical of using XRP as a means for settlement.

While Ripple did partner with American Express in 2017 to make cross-border payments using RippleNet between the UK and the US via its FXIP service, XRP was not part of that deal.

For now, there is no new partnership between Ripple and American Express involving XRP as of 2025.

While the SEC lawsuit put Ripple and XRP in a very uncertain position, a partial victory in 2023 helped Ripple recover some lost ground.

That partnership in 2017 between Ripple and American Express was all about Ripple’s blockchain technology to enable faster payments, and XRP was not part of that deal. Since then, so many rumors surfaced, but the core of the partnership remains that Ripple’s blockchain tech was meant for more efficient payments without having XRP directly involved in AMEX’s processes.