Ripple USD (RLUSD) has overtaken XRP as the leading asset in AI agent settlements tracked by the XRPL AI Hub, underscoring how stablecoin rails are being woven into automated machine-to-machine payments on the XRP Ledger.
According to data cited by the hub, tracked settlements have surged from roughly 1 million payments on July 8, 2026 to 7,090,438 payments by September 24, 2026. That represents an increase of more than 2.6 million tracked payments in about sixteen days. The dashboard also lists 160 registered merchants and 2,276 live x402 services, while reported seven-day average payment activity ranges from about 165,000 to more than 250,000 daily depending on the tracked window.
Within the tracked data, 7,306.63 RLUSD and 6,207.40 XRP have been settled, although the figures use different units and therefore cannot be compared directly in dollar terms. RLUSD's dollar peg is viewed as especially useful for developers pricing repeated API calls, inference requests, data services, and computing resources, since dollar-denominated charges are more predictable than XRP prices that fluctuate with market conditions.
The expansion follows Ripple's XRPL AI Starter Kit launched on June 9, 2026, which enables automated agents to pay for APIs, inference, compute, and online services. Payments can use XRP and RLUSD through the x402 payment infrastructure. Version 1.1 of the starter kit added support for the Machine Payments Protocol, which was separately developed by Stripe and Tempo. Coinbase created x402, while the Linux Foundation hosts its foundation under vendor-neutral governance.
The ecosystem data also shows how small transactions are becoming a defining feature of machine payments. The Heurist Inference Router reportedly received indexed RLUSD payments below one cent, including amounts such as $0.001364, $0.001211, and $0.000776. While thousands of tiny payments can generate substantial network activity, they may settle only modest economic value, making it difficult to assess broader XRP demand from transaction counts alone.
Broader industry support is also emerging. Mastercard named Ripple and t54 Labs among participants in its Agent Pay initiative, and Franklin Templeton reportedly joined a $5 million funding round for t54 Labs. XRPL settlement times of roughly three to five seconds and small, predictable fees are cited as features that support high-frequency, continuous payment authorization through Payment Channels.
As of the time of writing, XRP was trading near $1.55, according to CoinMarketCap. The data focuses primarily on transaction activity and service development, leaving broader settlement trends across the entire XRP Ledger unresolved.
