By Absa Corporate and Investment Banking has launched Absa Digital Asset Custody, using Ripple’s custody technology to provide institutional clients in South Africa with infrastructure for safeguarding and managing digital assets.
The launch turns into a live service a partnership between Absa and Ripple announced in October 2025. Absa said the offering provides a regulated environment for safeguarding digital assets and managing private keys to institutional standards.
The Absa Digital Asset Custody platform is aimed at institutional clients rather than retail cryptocurrency users. Absa said the service is designed around governance, security, compliance and control of assets, transactions and approvals.
The bank’s launch places digital asset custody within its corporate and investment banking operations as financial institutions increasingly develop infrastructure for cryptocurrencies and other tokenised assets.
Ripple is supplying the underlying custody technology. The company said when the partnership was announced last year that its technology would allow Absa to provide storage for tokenised assets, including cryptocurrencies.
Absa and Ripple first announced their custody partnership on Oct. 15, 2025. At the time, Absa said it would use Ripple’s institutional-grade digital asset custody technology to provide scalable and secure storage for customers in South Africa.
The partnership made Absa Ripple’s first major custody partner in Africa, according to Ripple.
Robyn Lawson, Absa’s head of digital product for custody, said in the 2025 announcement that the bank wanted a custody solution that met its security and operational standards.
Ripple’s Reece Merrick, managing director for the Middle East and Africa, said the partnership reflected growing demand for digital asset infrastructure among financial institutions.
The launch announced this week represents the next stage of that partnership, with Absa now marketing the custody service directly to institutional customers.
Digital asset custody refers to the infrastructure and controls used to safeguard digital assets and manage the cryptographic keys required to access them.
Unlike a cryptocurrency exchange, a custody service is primarily concerned with safekeeping, access controls, transaction authorisation, governance and operational security.
Absa says its service provides institutions with control over assets, transactions and approvals. The bank also says digital assets can create governance, security and regulatory risks without appropriate custody arrangements.
In an explanation of the technology behind the initiative, Lawson said Absa’s system uses secure hardware environments and layered controls to protect keys and authorisations. She also said the architecture incorporates recoverability measures and deterministic key derivation rather than relying on permanently stored private keys.
The approach is intended to apply controls familiar to institutional financial markets to digital assets, although the specific operational and regulatory arrangements remain dependent on the assets and services offered.
The Absa deal also expands Ripple’s digital asset custody business on the continent.
Ripple said in 2025 that its custody network included clients across Europe, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Africa. The company said it held more than 60 regulatory licences and registrations across various jurisdictions.
Ripple has also expanded its African activities beyond custody. The company previously announced support for Africa-based payments provider Chipper Cash and the availability of its U.S.-dollar-backed stablecoin, RLUSD, in Africa.
For Absa, the custody service adds another digital-asset capability to its corporate and investment banking operations. The bank has described custody as an important component of developing institutional participation in digital assets.
The launch comes as financial institutions and regulators across Africa continue to develop approaches to cryptocurrencies, tokenised assets and blockchain-based financial services.
Absa’s own research on digital assets has examined markets including South Africa, Botswana, Mauritius, Kenya and Ghana. The bank has said custody is an important component of trust, compliance and risk management as institutions explore digital investment products.
Ripple said in 2025 that 64% of Middle East and Africa finance leaders surveyed in its New Value Report viewed faster payments and settlement as the biggest incentive for incorporating blockchain-based currencies into cross-border payment flows.
The figure comes from Ripple’s own research and should therefore be viewed in that context.
Absa’s current custody offering is initially focused on South Africa. The bank’s wider group has operations across several African markets, including Kenya, Ghana, Botswana, Mauritius, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, among others.
The launch does not itself establish that the custody service is available across all of those markets. Any expansion would depend on the bank’s product strategy and applicable regulatory requirements.
The move nevertheless gives institutional clients in South Africa access to a bank-operated digital asset custody service built with Ripple’s custody technology, bringing the two companies’ 2025 agreement into an operating product.
For Africa’s financial sector, the development adds another institutional infrastructure option as banks, asset managers and other financial institutions assess how digital assets and tokenised financial products may fit within existing financial systems.
