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XRP claims AI session payments as RLUSD waits for a ledger upgrade with no announced date

9/18/2026

Machine-to-machine payment rails have become a contested layer in financial infrastructure, with competing chains and standards jockeying for the settlement role.

Ripple staked a claim on September 17, 2026, integrating the XRP Ledger into Stripe and Tempo's Machine Payments Protocol and handing $XRP a function that its own stablecoin, RLUSD, cannot yet perform.

Why the session layer runs on XRP Payment channels are native to the XRP Ledger.

An AI agent opens a channel, signs vouchers off-chain at rates exceeding 100,000 per second, and the ledger records two transactions total: one to open, one to close.