XRP vs Stellar (XLM) for Cross-Border Payments (2026)

Verdict: XRP suits banks and payment businesses that want an enterprise settlement rail, with Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity moving value across corridors and a settled US regulatory position. Stellar (XLM) suits developers, remittance apps and stablecoin issuers that want near-free transfers and tokenised assets like USDC, the path MoneyGram uses for cash-in and cash-out. Both settle in seconds and cost a fraction of a cent at the network level, so the real decision is partners, compliance and tooling, not throughput.

How are XRP and Stellar connected?

XRP and Stellar share a founder. Jed McCaleb co-founded OpenCoin, the company behind the XRP Ledger, in 2012, then left in 2013 and co-founded Stellar with Joyce Kim, launching it on 31 July 2014 through the nonprofit Stellar Development Foundation. Stellar’s early code drew on the XRP Ledger, but it later replaced that with its own consensus protocol, so the two networks are now technically separate.

McCaleb founded OpenCoin, which was renamed Ripple after Chris Larsen joined; he has described it as a bitcoin-style network that did not depend on mining. When Stellar launched, it was presented as a gateway between fiat and digital currencies, with Stripe among its early backers. CoinDesk reported the Stellar launch.

That shared history is why the two projects look alike on paper: both are payment-focused ledgers with no mining. See our XRP explainer for the Ripple side and the coin directory for where XLM sits among major assets.

Which is cheaper to send, XRP or XLM?

At the network level they cost the same: XRP charges a base fee of 10 drops, equal to 0.00001 XRP, per transaction, and Stellar charges 100 stroops, equal to 0.00001 XLM, per operation. Both are anti-spam fees, not profit, and are far smaller than what an exchange or remittance provider charges to move cash in and out.

Both fees are priced in the network’s smallest unit. XRP’s fee is destroyed rather than paid to anyone, according to the XRP Ledger fee schedule. Stellar’s inclusion fee is deducted from the source account and collected into a locked account no one spends, per the Stellar fee docs.

On an illustrative $1,000 cross-border transfer, the on-ledger fee is 0.00001 XRP or 0.00001 XLM, a fraction of a cent. The costs that actually matter are the exchange’s buy and sell spread and any withdrawal or partner fee, which can run from a few dollars to tens of dollars depending on the provider.

The minimum balances are reserves that stop spam accounts flooding the ledger: XRP requires a 1 XRP base reserve plus 0.2 XRP for each object an account owns, per the XRP Ledger reserves page, while Stellar requires a 0.5 XLM base reserve per entry, a 1 XLM absolute minimum and 0.5 XLM more for each trustline or data entry, per the Stellar lumens docs.

How fast are XRP and Stellar transactions?

Both settle in seconds. The XRP Ledger closes a new ledger roughly every 3 to 5 seconds, and Stellar targets a new ledger roughly every 5 seconds. Because neither network mines, there is no block waiting time or probabilistic confirmation: once a ledger is validated, the transactions in it are final.

The XRP Ledger documentation says new ledger versions usually close about every 3 to 5 seconds, on its ledger close times page. Stellar Core is set to close the ledger roughly every 5 seconds, although an individual ledger can take longer, per the Stellar stack docs.

That is far quicker than Bitcoin’s roughly 10-minute blocks, which is why both are marketed for payments rather than slow settlement. See how long a Bitcoin transaction takes for contrast, or how Bitcoin’s proof of work differs.

How do XRP and Stellar reach consensus differently?

Both replace mining with a network of validators, but the trust model differs. The XRP Ledger asks each server to choose a Unique Node List (UNL) of validators it trusts, while Stellar uses the Stellar Consensus Protocol, a federated Byzantine agreement in which every node picks quorum slices of peers. Neither pays block rewards, and both finalise in seconds.

On the XRP Ledger, participants select validators run by separate parties unlikely to collude. Confirming an invalid transaction would require more than 80% of those trusted validators to collude; if 20% to 80% are faulty, the network stops rather than diverging, per the XRP Ledger consensus page.

Stellar’s consensus is open-membership: each node’s quorum set lists the validators it trusts, and agreement emerges where those sets overlap. It favours safety over liveness, so the network can briefly stall rather than accept a bad ledger, per the Stellar Consensus Protocol docs.

Who uses XRP and Stellar for real payments?

Ripple sells enterprise payment software, and its On-Demand Liquidity product uses XRP to bridge two currencies without pre-funded accounts in every corridor. Stellar’s headline partner is MoneyGram, which has used the network since 2021 to power a USDC stablecoin balance and cash-in and cash-out at its retail locations. They target different kinds of buyer.

Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity lets an institution convert outgoing fiat into XRP, send it, and convert to destination fiat, with Ripple prefunding the sender’s XRP wallet, per the Ripple ODL docs.

MoneyGram and the Stellar Development Foundation extended their partnership in April 2026. The MoneyGram app’s stablecoin balance, built with Stellar, Crossmint and Circle’s USDC, is live in Colombia and El Salvador, with MoneyGram’s network covering more than 200 countries and territories and nearly 500,000 retail locations, per the Stellar press release. USDC is a dollar-pegged stablecoin, not Stellar’s own XLM; see our stablecoin comparison.

What happened in the SEC case against Ripple?

The SEC sued Ripple in December 2020, and the case closed in August 2025 when both sides dropped their appeals. Judge Analisa Torres’s July 2023 ruling stands: XRP sold programmatically to retail buyers was not a security, while Ripple’s direct sales to institutions were unregistered securities. Ripple was ordered to pay a $125,035,150 penalty under a permanent injunction.

Ripple and the SEC filed a joint stipulation of dismissal on 7 August 2025, ending the appeal before the Second Circuit and leaving the district court judgment final, as The Block reported. The judgment kept a $125,035,150 penalty and a permanent injunction over unregistered institutional sales, as DL News reported.

The outcome is specific to Ripple and XRP; Stellar has not faced a comparable SEC action. Our XRP page covers the case and the XRP Ledger in more depth.

Do XRP and Stellar have different supply models?

Both launched with 100 billion units, but they diverged. XRP’s full 100 billion existed at creation, with 55 billion later placed in escrow. Stellar also started at 100 billion, added 1% annual inflation for about five years, then burned roughly 55 billion XLM in November 2019, leaving a total of about 50 billion XLM. Neither is mined.

The XRP Ledger created 100 billion XRP at launch in 2011 to 2012, gifting 80 billion to Ripple, which was then called OpenCoin; in 2017 Ripple locked 55 billion in escrow, per the XRP Ledger XRP page.

Stellar ended inflation on 28 October 2019, and on 4 November 2019 the Stellar Development Foundation sent about 55.44 billion XLM to an inaccessible account. The documented total supply now stands at about 50 billion XLM, per the Stellar lumens docs. Unlike Bitcoin, neither network issues new coins through mining.

How do I buy and store XRP and XLM safely?

You can buy XRP and XLM on the same major exchanges, including Kraken, which lists both. They are separate ledgers, so each needs its own wallet address: an XRP address cannot receive XLM. For larger amounts, use a hardware wallet or self-custody software, and never share your seed phrase with anyone.

Start with our guide to choosing an exchange. After buying, move coins you plan to hold into a wallet you control. Both XRP and XLM are supported by hardware wallets such as the Ledger Nano X.

Treat any message asking for your seed phrase as phishing. Read how to store a seed phrase before you set one up. Crypto assets are volatile and this is not financial advice.