Ripple and Water.org are expanding a collaboration that has already helped more than one million people gain access to safe water or sanitation financing across Latin America.
The nonprofit, co-founded by Gary White and Matt Damon, is now layering Ripple Payments, the RLUSD stablecoin, and digital asset custody tools into its operations so capital can move faster and cheaper into emerging markets.
Faster Money, Lower Fees, Same-Day Settlement
Water.org has used Ripple Payments to move more than $3.2 million across four markets.
Settlement times in Mexico and Brazil dropped from two to three days to same-day, while payment processing became available around the clock instead of being limited by a single daily banking cutoff.
Transaction fees fell by as much as 66 percent, so a larger share of every dollar reaches borrowers rather than intermediaries.
Funding Boosts Ripple’s Stablecoin Expansion
Ripple committed $6 million over three years to support Water.org programs such as WaterCredit, which partners with local financial institutions to offer affordable loans for household taps, toilets, and piped connections.
Separately, Water.org received a $1.25 million grant in Ripple’s RLUSD through the Stablecoin Impact Fund. That capital is intended to expand stablecoin-enabled WaterCredit disbursements into Indonesia, the Philippines, and Uganda.
Water Custody Tools & The Get Blue Movement
Water.org will also begin using Ripple’s Wallet-as-a-Service technology to manage digital assets as the programs scale. Beyond the direct funding, Ripple joined Get Blue, the Water.org movement modeled after the (RED) campaign, as its exclusive digital-asset and fintech partner.
Founding brands include Gap, Amazon, Starbucks, and Ecolab. Ripple’s first year of Get Blue support helped reach 400,000 people, with the three-year commitment expected to support 1.2 million as Water.org works toward its broader goal of reaching 200 million people by 2030.
Voices From Both Partnering Sides Get Heard
Gary White, co-founder and CEO of Water.org, said the actual water crisis is fundamentally a funding-flow problem rather than a lack of capital, and that Ripple’s infrastructure has shown what efficient movement of money looks like in practice.
Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple’s CEO, noted that the partnership demonstrates the original promise of crypto and blockchain: making money move faster, more efficiently, and globally for real-world needs.
White and Matt Damon joined Garlinghouse for a fireside chat at Ripple Swell in New York.
The expanded setup combines traditional philanthropic capital with on-chain settlement and custody so that repaid loans can be recycled into new lending through vehicles such as the WaterEquity Everspring Fund.
For Water.org, the practical result is more of each donated or invested dollar reaching families that need household water connections. For Ripple, it is another demonstration of its payments and stablecoin stack operating outside pure trading venues and inside humanitarian finance.
