Loyalty points are worth billions, but most never leave the account where they are earned.
Webus International, an XRP-focused financial company, wants to change this.
Last week, the Nasdaq-listed company announced plans for a tokenized travel rewards exchange powered by the XRP stablecoin system.
The Singapore-based company is targeting the global loyalty market, one of the most inefficient sectors in consumer finance, according to a press release.
The hidden cost of locked-in rewards
Every year, travelers earn hundreds of billions of dollars in loyalty credits through airlines, hotels, and mobility apps.
But Hatem Kemali, co-founder of digital rewards platform Resal, estimates that more than $100 billion of these points remain unredeemed.
He said this situation is likely to occur because “points are trapped in broken, fragmented systems that are hard to track, hard to combine, and hard to consume.”
He added:
“Traditionally, loyalty points were earned post-purchase and redeemed in limited ways. But today, consumer expectations have changed and people want to use loyalty like money, not just for discounts.”
This friction defines the opportunity Webus hopes to seize. Its platform allows users to exchange and redeem points across multiple brands in real-time, settling value through XRP-based stablecoin payments rather than an opaque accounting ledger.
Turn loyalty into liquid value
Traditional reward networks function like closed economies. Travelers may hold miles with Emirates, hotel points with Marriott, and ride credits with Grab, but none of these systems communicate.
Webbus’ blockchain framework tokenizes these balances and connects them through the XRP system by enabling instant conversion between brands and regions without exchange risk or manual adjustments.
Nan Zheng, CEO of Webus, said:
“By integrating XRP stablecoin payments, we aim to bring real-time, low-cost, transparent value translation to the travel rewards ecosystem.”
Although the company did not provide further explanation about specific stablecoins or the role of XRP in this system, it can be assumed that the XRP Ledger (XRPL) will play a central role in this effort.
In such situations, Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin and XRP will act as bridge assets, allowing Webus to route payments across RippleNet’s existing corridors.
This movement moves value in seconds instead of the days typical of bank-based payments. At the same time, the company can reduce costs, improve liquidity and give consumers the ability to manage their loyalty balances “like cash.”
Why Ripple’s technology is right for the job
Ripple’s core payments stack was built to address exactly this kind of multi-currency congestion.
Its network allows financial institutions to instantly transfer funds using XRP as a bridge between local currencies, without requiring a pre-funded account. This design has been used for many years in cross-border banking transactions and can now provide a ready-made backbone for loyalty conversion.
The stablecoin integration also aligns with Ripple’s broader efforts to tokenize real-world assets. Introduced last year, RLUSD provides businesses with a USD-denominated payment option that is natively compatible with XRPL.
For Webbus, that means stable, regulated liquidity. For Ripple, this is another step in expanding the utility of XRP beyond institutional payments and into the consumer ecosystem.
If successful, Webs could demonstrate how stablecoins solve real-world problems outside of trading desks.
Rather than chasing speculative yields, XRP and RLUSD will quietly drive value exchange behind the scenes of everyday transactions, turning loyalty points into a universal micro-currency for travel.