Key Takeaways
- Saudi Arabia has ended its participation in mBridge after completing a planned proof of concept in May 2025, less than a year after becoming a full participant.
- Riyad Bank’s technology arm, Jeel, separately partnered with Ripple in January to explore cross-border payments, custody, and tokenization.
- The overlap creates an XRP angle, but there is currently no evidence that Saudi Arabia is replacing mBridge with Ripple, XRP, or RLUSD.
Saudi Arabia has walked away from one of the world’s most closely watched central bank digital currency experiments, reopening questions about what technology the Kingdom could use for its next generation of cross-border payments.
The Saudi Central Bank, or SAMA, is no longer participating in mBridge, the multi-CBDC platform developed with the central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates.
SAMA told the Financial Times that its proof of concept ended on May 13, 2025, after which it ceased participating. The central bank described the departure as the planned conclusion of its experiment rather than a sudden policy reversal.
This matters because Saudi Arabia had only become a full mBridge participant in June 2024. At the time, SAMA said it joined to investigate whether wholesale CBDCs could make cross-border payments and settlement between commercial banks more efficient.
But Saudi Arabia’s search for faster payment infrastructure hasn’t stopped, and Ripple is already part of it.
Riyad Bank Is Testing Ripple
In January 2026, Jeel, the innovation and technology arm of Riyad Bank, announced a partnership with Ripple to explore the use of blockchain technology in Saudi financial services.
The collaboration specifically covers cross-border payment corridors, digital-asset custody and tokenization, with proofs of concept planned inside Jeel’s regulatory sandbox.
That creates an obvious connection to the mBridge departure.
Both initiatives tackle overlapping problems: making international payments faster, cheaper, and less dependent on traditional correspondent banking chains.
But the technologies take different approaches.
mBridge uses a shared distributed ledger on which participating central banks can issue wholesale CBDCs and commercial banks can transact directly. The platform reached minimum viable product status in 2024 and was designed for real-time cross-border payments and foreign-exchange settlement.
Ripple’s payments infrastructure, by contrast, is private-sector technology designed to connect financial institutions and facilitate cross-border settlement.
Saudi Arabia also has a history with Ripple. SAMA launched a Ripple pilot in 2018, allowing Saudi banks to experiment with the company’s cross-border payment technology.
Does That Mean XRP Could Benefit?
Not necessarily.
The biggest missing piece is XRP itself.
Jeel’s January announcement names Ripple and discusses blockchain-powered payment corridors, but it does not say XRP or Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin will be used. SAMA has likewise made no announcement connecting its mBridge departure with Ripple.
Modern Ripple payment products can support multiple settlement assets, meaning a Ripple partnership does not automatically translate into XRP adoption.
There is also no indication that Saudi Arabia abandoned the underlying idea of wholesale CBDCs. SAMA has spent years experimenting with the technology, including Project Aber, its earlier joint CBDC experiment with the UAE.
mBridge Exit Opens the Field, Not the Door to XRP
Saudi Arabia’s departure remains notable in the wider cross-border payments race.
mBridge was designed partly to address the same problems that have attracted Ripple, stablecoin issuers, and other blockchain payment providers: expensive correspondent banking, slow settlement, and fragmented international payment infrastructure.
The BIS itself stepped away from mBridge in 2024 after helping to develop the project, although the platform continued under the auspices of its central-bank participants. Saudi Arabia has now ended its own experiment while China, Hong Kong, Thailand and the UAE remain involved.
For XRP holders, the Riyad Bank partnership makes Saudi Arabia worth watching. It does not, however, establish that XRP is replacing mBridge.
For now, the clearer conclusion is that Saudi Arabia is keeping multiple options open as the battle to modernize cross-border payments moves beyond a single CBDC platform.
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Dr. Guneet Kaur is a senior editor at CCN.com and a Science Fellow at Exponential Science. She is a fintech and blockchain expert with extensive experience in digital finance education, blockchain ecosystems, and cryptocurrency markets. She has worked with global media such as Cointelegraph, as well as education and blockchain platforms, to design and lead strategic content and learning initiatives. As an educator and assessor for top-tier executive programs, she bridges real-world fintech trends with academic insight.
Dr. Kaur is also a published researcher and peer reviewer across fintech and data science journals, including Financial Innovation Journal and International Journal of Big Data Intelligence and Applications. Her work spans data-driven analysis, Web3 innovation, and technical content development. With a strong foundation in both industry and academia, she translates complex financial technologies into practical applications, empowering learners, professionals, and institutions across the rapidly evolving digital finance landscape.
