February 6, 2025 — With the official launch of the t-0 Network—backed by a strategic investment from Tether—the industry has moved into the era of institutional-grade, programmable settlement.

At Ripe, we are proud to announce our role as a launch partner for t-0, serving as a primary infrastructure node for USDT-to-fiat settlement across ASEAN and the broader APAC region.

The vision: global payments, local settlement

The promise of stablecoins has always been "money at the speed of the internet." However, for licensed financial institutions, the "last mile"—the transition from a digital ledger to a local bank account or e-wallet—has remained a fragmented, high-friction bottleneck.

The t-0 Network solves the "global highway" problem. By connecting institutions through a single API and a patented net-settlement mechanism, t-0 enables banks and fintechs to coordinate cross-border payments with near-instant settlement using USDT as the core engine.

Ripe provides the local off-ramps. As the launch partner for Asia, Ripe integrates with t-0 to ensure that when a bank in London or a fintech in Buenos Aires sends value via t-0, that value settles instantly into a Philippine QRPh code, an Indonesian bank account, or a Hong Kong e-wallet.

• The t-0 role: Matches and records global ledger balances in real-time, utilizing the $184B+ liquidity of USDT to eliminate third-party prefunding and reduce FX exposure.
• The Ripe role: Orchestrates the final fiat disbursement. Through our "Automated Settlement Network," we receive the instruction from T-0 and push local currency directly into the recipient's chosen account.

The result? The receiver never touches, holds, or even sees the underlying crypto. They simply receive local fiat in their standard payment account, faster and cheaper than the legacy SWIFT system could ever dream.

Built-in trust: compliance-as-a-service

Institutional adoption requires more than just speed; it requires a radical commitment to safety. Ripe’s role as a t-0 launch partner is built on our "Compliance-as-Code" philosophy.

Every transaction routed through Ripe in the APAC region undergoes automated, multi-jurisdictional screening. By integrating AML, transaction monitoring, and Travel Rule compliance directly into the API flow, Ripe ensures that the t-0 network remains the most trusted environment for institutional value transfer in the world.

Unlocking Asian corridors

Asia is the world’s most vibrant digital currency economy, driven by high-volume flows in cross-border payroll, trade finance, and remittances. By pairing Tether’s global liquidity with Ripe’s hyper-local settlement rails, we are unlocking corridors that were previously trapped in legacy inefficiency.

"At Ripe, our mission is to build the automated settlement infrastructure for the digital economy," says Chuck Lam, CEO of Ripe. "Partnering with Tether and t-0 allows us to scale that mission. We're no longer just talking about the future of payments—we're building the plumbing that makes it work for every bank, business, and individual in Asia."

The gap between markets has officially been bridged.

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