Alchemy Pay will let users in 173 countries buy Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin with more than 300 local payment options.

Alchemy Pay (ACH) just plugged Ripple's (XRP) fresh RLUSD stablecoin into its global on ramp and did it with almost boring efficiency. Now anyone in 173 countries can hit buy, pick Visa (V), Apple Pay, or the local wallet du jour, and walk away with blockchain dollars that actually clear. 

RLUSD is Ripple's answer to the stablecoin wars, a dollar pegged token minted by Standard Custody, fully backed by cash and cash equivalents sitting under New York DFS supervision. 

No funky algorithms. No twenty page disclaimers. One dollar in, one RLUSD out. The combo solves crypto's favorite chicken and egg problem: real money in, real money out, minus the sketchy detours. 

Ripple brings the compliance pedigree it spent a decade and a few lawsuits collecting, while Alchemy Pay supplies 300 payment rails that already understand how to talk to banks. 

Merchants, exchanges, and DeFi apps get a dollar they can settle in seconds and actually redeem. Institutions get a token that passes the regulator sniff test. Retail users get a button that works like Apple's one click buy, except the receipt lives on chain. 

Alchemy Pay claims three million users and eight million transactions last year, plus licenses from the UK to Lithuania, so it knows how to juggle paperwork. Plugging RLUSD into that machine should make KYC thrash a little less painful for everyone else. 

The real play is cross border payments. Move RLUSD across XRP Ledger or Ethereum in the time it takes SWIFT to find the shift key, cash out locally, repeat. Alchemy takes a cut, Ripple gets volume, users dodge wire fees. 

If stablecoins are the bridge between TradFi and whatever we are calling Web3 this week, this is a concrete slab with traffic already queued. 

Maybe the next wave of hype will stick. Or not. Either way, the rails are getting laid.

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