Ripple offers two products for cross-border payments: RippleNet and On-Demand Liquidity. Understanding both helps explain why ODL works the way it does and who it is actually built for.
RippleNet is a peer-to-peer distributed application that maintains a virtual ledger to replicate Nostro and Vostro accounts and relationships. It works as a bi-directional messaging and settlement layer. Instead of connecting directly to the core banking systems of financial institutions, your middleware integrates with RippleNet through a set of API operations.
It is hosted in a cloud environment managed by Ripple. This means no on-site infrastructure costs on your end. Ripple handles maintenance, upgrades, and 24/7 monitoring. RippleNet is also SOC 2 certified, covering security, availability, confidentiality, and privacy.
The two main features of Ripple Net are the RippleNet APIs and the Ripple Payments ODL UI. The API set includes the RippleNet Server, Orchestration, Smart Liquidation Service, and Report Service. The UI lets you manage everything from creating payments and monitoring transactions to managing accounts, users, API credentials, and partner connections.
On-Demand Liquidity sits on top of RippleNet. It is a liquidity management solution that lets customers move money across borders and currencies instantly without pre-funding in any market. ODL uses XRP as a bridge currency, sourcing liquidity on demand and settling funds in real time. It operates 24/7/365.
It provides real-time settlement, access to payout rails around the globe, upfront visibility of fees, end-to-end payment status tracking, and automatic payout from certain exchanges directly to the beneficiary's bank account.
Together, RippleNet handles the messaging and settlement infrastructure, while ODL handles the liquidity side removing the need to park capital in advance across multiple corridors.
ODL is built for three types of organizations:
Payment service providers use it to handle cross-border remittances everyday transfers people send to family and friends in other countries. Fintechs use it to process business-to-business transactions for small and medium-sized enterprises paying suppliers or partners overseas. And companies with operations in multiple countries use it for internal treasury transfers moving their own funds between accounts in different markets.
Each of these three groups has a different workflow, and ODL handles each one differently.
Individual payments cover single transactions made by a customer or business, each one settled through on-demand liquidity at the time it happens. This applies to both personal remittances and B2B payments where each transaction is processed on its own rather than in batches.
How it works:
Ripple deposits XRP into the sender's designated wallet. The sender retrieves a quote through the RippleNet API and accepts it. RippleNet transfers XRP from the sender's wallet to the receiver's wallet. The receiver pays out fiat currency to the beneficiary. The receiver then liquidates the XRP for fiat. Ripple invoices the sender for all initiated payments in aggregate.
Each payment goes through the full XRP bridge in real time. There is no pre-funding of fiat on the receiving side. XRP acts as the liquidity in the middle, and the receiver converts it to local fiat only after the transfer has happened. This is what makes individual ODL payments fast no waiting for correspondent banks or pre-positioned funds.
This use case works well for remittance companies processing high volumes of smaller payments and businesses making one-off supplier payments across borders.
Bulk funding works differently. Instead of settling each payment through ODL individually, the sender uses ODL to top up a pre-funded position with a receiver. Individual fiat payouts are then made from that funded account later.
A practical example: a remittance company needs to pre-fund its position with an aggregator in another country so that when customer transfers come in, the aggregator can pay them out quickly. Instead of wire-transferring fiat in advance and waiting days for settlement, the company uses ODL to instantly top up that position with XRP, which the aggregator converts to local fiat.
How it works:
Ripple deposits XRP into the sender's wallet. The sender retrieves and accepts a quote via the RippleNet API. RippleNet transfers XRP from the sender's wallet to the receiver's wallet. The receiver adds fiat funds to the sender's account this funded position is used for payouts later. The receiver liquidates the XRP for fiat. Ripple invoices the sender in aggregate. The sender then sends payment instructions to the receiver through RippleNet, and the receiver disburses funds to beneficiaries from the sender's funded account.
Ripple's preference is that senders use RippleNet to also process the final beneficiary payouts keeping the full payment flow within the network.
Bulk funding suits high-volume remittance operators and B2B payment processors who need liquidity topped up across multiple markets without tying up large amounts of pre-positioned fiat capital.
The internal treasury use case is not about sending money to external customers or beneficiaries. It is about a company moving its own money between its own accounts in different countries.
A multinational company with a subsidiary or bank account abroad may need to fund it regularly. With traditional methods, this involves international wire transfers that take days and carry significant fees. With ODL, the transfer settles quickly using XRP as the bridge, and the funds land in the company's own local account.
How it works:
Ripple deposits XRP into the customer's designated wallet. The customer retrieves and accepts a quote through the RippleNet API. The customer uses RippleNet and ODL to liquidate XRP into the destination fiat currency. That fiat is transferred from the wallet to the customer's local bank account in the foreign country. Ripple invoices the customer for initiated payments in aggregate.
There is no external beneficiary here. The company is both sender and receiver. ODL acts as the bridge that converts the funds into local currency and lands them in the company's own account. This is particularly useful for companies that regularly move working capital, cover operational costs, or fund regional payroll across markets.
All three use cases run on the same underlying setup XRP as the bridge asset, RippleNet as the transfer network, and the quote-and-accept flow via the API. What changes is who the end recipient is and how the final payout is structured.
Individual payments go directly to a named beneficiary, one at a time. Bulk funding tops up a position first and distributes to multiple beneficiaries later. Internal treasury transfers move funds into a company's own account with no external recipient involved.
Together, these three models cover the main real-world scenarios where cross-border payments are slow, expensive, or dependent on pre-positioned capital. ODL removes that dependency by using XRP to bridge currencies on demand liquidity is available when the payment needs to happen, not held in advance across dozens of corridors.
To understand how ODL works step by step from transaction verification to final settlement and which corridors ODL currently operates in, our earlier guides on the ODL process and global expansion cover both in detail.
This article is for informational purposes only. For technical implementation details, refer to the official Ripple documentation at docs.ripple.com.
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