Australia has taken a concrete step toward institutional blockchain adoption after the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) licensed AUDC Pty Ltd to issue a regulated, Australian dollar-backed stablecoin on the XRP Ledger.
The stablecoin, designated AUDD, is issued by AUDC Private Ltd – a subsidiary of Australian fintech group Novatti – and carries a full Australian Financial Services License (AFSL). That distinction matters. Unlike the wave of unregulated digital tokens that have drawn regulatory scrutiny globally, AUDD is structured as an institutional-grade payment instrument. Major Australian banks and licensed financial institutions can now legally issue, hold, and transact in digital AUD directly on-chain.
Technically, the case for building on the XRP Ledger is straightforward: transactions settle in three to five seconds at a cost of fractions of a cent. For institutions processing high volumes of payments, that efficiency gap compared to legacy rails is difficult to ignore.
Industry observers have been quick to frame the development as more than a product launch. The XRPL’s move from experimental network to formally recognized payment infrastructure represents, in their view, a structural shift in how Australia’s financial system might operate at the settlement layer.
The AUDD licensing does not exist in isolation. Australia is currently mid-way through a significant reworking of its digital asset regulatory framework.
The Corporations Amendment (Digital Assets Framework) Bill 2025, introduced to parliament this year, brings crypto exchanges and platforms under the same regulatory standards applied to traditional financial institutions. Platforms holding more than $5,000 per customer or facilitating over $10 million in annual transactions will be required to hold an AFSL – a threshold that pulls a substantial portion of the local crypto industry into formal oversight.
ASIC has also introduced exemptions designed to ease distribution of licensed stablecoins, extending beyond AUDD to include AUDM, issued by Catena Digital, and AUDF, issued by Forte Securities.
While the private stablecoin market moves forward, the Reserve Bank of Australia is running its own parallel track. Project Acacia, the RBA’s wholesale central bank digital currency pilot, is testing tokenized assets and digital money for institutional use cases including cross-border transactions and wholesale debt markets. ANZ Bank is among the key participants.
The RBA has been explicit that it sees no strong case for a retail CBDC – one accessible to everyday consumers – at this stage. The focus remains squarely on wholesale efficiency between financial institutions, not consumer-facing applications.
Adding another layer to the infrastructure picture, Mastercard has demonstrated technology capable of wrapping CBDCs onto different blockchain networks, including the XRP Ledger and Ethereum, enabling secure interoperability across systems that would otherwise operate in silos.
The Australian government’s own estimates put the potential productivity and cost savings from unlocking digital finance innovation at up to $24 billion per year. Whether the regulatory architecture now being built is sufficient to capture that opportunity remains to be seen – but the scaffolding is going up faster than most anticipated.
