Ripple said on October 14 that it had formed a strategic partnership with Meritz Securities to explore using Ripple Custody and its tokenization infrastructure in South Korea’s capital markets.
Ripple characterized the arrangement as its first partnership with a South Korean securities firm, expanding its institutional activity in the country into a regulated capital-markets setting. The companies have not announced a tokenized-security issuance, custody product or other digital-asset service for clients.
The initial work will remain within Meritz’s existing business scope and South Korea’s current securities and digital-asset regulations, Ripple said. Broader expansion is tied to changes in the regulatory framework.
Meritz and Ripple set an exploratory capital-markets mandate
Meritz Securities and Ripple will examine potential applications for Ripple Custody and Ripple’s tokenization infrastructure in South Korea’s capital market, an arrangement Ripple characterized as a strategic partnership focused on institutional custody and tokenization.
Ripple said the work will initially remain within Meritz’s existing business scope and South Korea’s current securities and digital-asset regulations, and that expansion may be considered as the regulatory framework develops. It did not present the agreement as authorization for new products.
The partnership agreement was signed on October 1 at Meritz Securities’ headquarters in Yeouido, Seoul, with Meritz Chief Executive Jang Won-jae and Ripple President Monica Long attending, according to TokenPost.
Meritz’s digital-asset ambitions extend beyond custody
The Ripple arrangement arrives as Meritz evaluates a wider set of potential digital-asset businesses. Those areas include spot exchange-traded funds, fractional-investment products, security tokens, trading platforms and Korean-won-denominated stablecoins, TokenPost reported on October 7.
Those evaluations should not be conflated with completed launches. None of the potential offerings was announced as a live product, and the Ripple partnership does not identify any of them as an immediate outcome.
Still, the range under review gives the custody and tokenization discussion a broader institutional context. A securities company assessing token-related products, trading venues and fractional-investment structures would need to consider operational systems alongside the regulatory limits that govern its current business. Ripple and Meritz have said their work begins within those limits.
The distinction is particularly relevant to security tokens and fractional-investment products, both of which appear among Meritz’s evaluated areas. The announced partnership concerns exploration of infrastructure; it does not say that Meritz will issue, list or distribute tokenized securities.
Ripple gains its first Korean securities-firm partner
For Ripple, Meritz is its fourth institutional partner in South Korea in 2026 and its first in the country’s securities industry, the company said. Ripple cited earlier collaborations involving Kyobo Life Insurance, Kbank and Jeonbuk Bank.
The Meritz agreement therefore extends Ripple’s Korean institutional network into a different segment of finance. The company’s prior named partners in this year’s count include insurers and banks; Meritz brings a securities-firm relationship to the group.
Whether that relationship progresses beyond exploratory work will depend on the scope Meritz can pursue under existing rules and on how South Korea’s regulatory framework changes. For now, the announced mandate is limited: the companies are assessing custody and tokenization infrastructure for capital markets within Meritz’s established business boundaries.
