How PACE Act Could Give Ripple (XRP) Faster Access to Federal Reserve Payment Rails

Ripple already holds more state licenses than most of its rivals combined. That advantage may soon matter less than a single piece of federal legislation working through Congress.

The PACE Act would give nonbank payment firms unmediated access to Fedwire, FedNow and FedACH, the core payment rails the Federal Reserve operates.

Ripple and Circle stand out as the two companies named specifically as the biggest beneficiaries of the bill. That distinction matters because access to these rails currently runs through a separate, much slower process.

A Queue With Almost No Precedent

Ripple has a master account application pending with the Federal Reserve, and it is in the Fed’s slowest review category. Only two uninsured institutions have ever received full access through that track. There is no fixed timeline attached to it, and no guarantee of approval at any point.

The PACE Act changes that structure. It introduces a 360-day statutory clock, a fixed deadline that does not currently exist for firms in Ripple’s position. As it stands now, the bill is the only proposal on the table that could let Ripple bypass the open-ended queue altogether and compress a process that could otherwise take years into a matter of months.

Licenses Already In Place

That licensing base means Ripple would not need to build new state-level infrastructure if the PACE Act passes. The company’s compliance groundwork is already in place at a scale that exceeds what the legislation itself would require.

What Passage Would Change

If the PACE Act becomes law, Ripple’s relationship with the Federal Reserve would shift from an indefinite waiting period to a bounded one. The 360-day clock replaces uncertainty with a fixed endpoint, and Circle stands alongside Ripple as one of the two companies the bill was written to accommodate.

For a company that has spent years pursuing a master account without a resolution, a statutory deadline represents a structural change rather than a procedural one. Combined with an existing base of more than 50 money transmitter licenses, Ripple’s position heading into any vote on the PACE Act reflects preparation that predates the legislation itself.