Ripple has joined Water.org, co-founded by Matt Damon, as the exclusive digital asset and payments partner for its Get Blue campaign, deploying its Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin to accelerate funding for clean water access across underserved communities worldwide.
Water.org launched the campaign at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2026. Their goal is to reach 200 million people with safe water by 2030. However, more than two billion people currently lack that access.
RLUSD Cuts the Cost of Sending Aid
Traditional cross-border transfers to microfinance partners in emerging markets pass through multiple correspondent banks. These transactions take days to settle and incur a fee on each payment.
Ripple routes RLUSD across blockchain rails in minutes, delivering a dollar-equivalent asset to recipient institutions without that overhead. The cost difference matters most at smaller transfer sizes typical in microfinance lending.
Water.org will use the stablecoin to move seed funding. This capital will support local lending partners across Asia, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa.
In turn, those partners issue low-cost loans to households for water and sanitation connections, a model the nonprofit has operated for decades.
RLUSD holds a 1:1 peg to the US dollar, with segregated cash reserves covering every token in circulation. Its regulated structure allows recipient institutions to hold a dollar-denominated asset without a US bank account.
However, banking access barriers remain a core obstacle to institutional stablecoin adoption in emerging markets.
Stablecoin Reach Expands Beyond Finance
Ripple joins Amazon, Starbucks, and Ecolab in the Get Blue coalition as its exclusive payments infrastructure partner. Specifically, it is the only member deploying a digital payments rail. Moving forward, consumer-facing activations start in summer 2026.
The Water.org deal extends RLUSD into humanitarian finance as RLUSD’s global stablecoin reach expands fast. For instance, Mastercard added RLUSD to its settlement infrastructure in June 2026.
Japan’s megabank stablecoin plans and the euro stablecoin MiCA record cap signal that dollar-pegged and regulated stablecoins are gaining traction across major financial systems simultaneously.
Ripple projected $33 trillion in on-chain stablecoin volume for 2026 at XRP Tokyo in April. Get Blue will serve as a live test of whether that infrastructure can move aid funds as efficiently as it does institutional capital.
The Water.org partnership pushes stablecoin utility into the humanitarian sector, where efficiency gains in fund transfers have direct consequences for the communities waiting on the other end.
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