Security has long been foundational to institutional digital asset custody, but the way institutions choose between providers is evolving. A growing emphasis on governance, interoperability, and integration means modern digital asset custody goes far beyond safekeeping.
As stablecoins, tokenized assets and blockchain-based payments move beyond pilots, institutions are looking past how to securely hold digital assets toward what those assets can enable. The answer depends largely on the custody infrastructure beneath them.
To explore this shift, Ripple commissioned Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to produce an independent research report, Beyond Safekeeping: Custody as the Operating Layer Beneath Digital Finance. The report aims to advance the industry’s understanding of how custody requirements are changing, what institutions should prioritize and where the next opportunities for adoption and innovation may emerge.
Security has become the baseline
According to BCG, over 30% of digital assets, excluding holdings on centralized exchanges, are now held through institutional custody models, and that share continues to grow. As the market matures, and as frameworks like MiCA in Europe and the GENIUS Act in the United States bring regulatory clarity, safekeeping and key management have become baseline requirements rather than differentiators. BCG finds that institutions increasingly evaluate custody providers on what sits above security: enterprise-grade governance and policy controls, interoperability across networks, and integration with existing financial infrastructure. The report also looks at how rising bot and AI activity is making governance and approval controls just as important to security as cryptography.
As a result, custody is becoming an operating layer for digital finance. It enables institutions to securely govern, move and use assets across their financial workflows, not just hold them.
Custody models are diversifying
Institutional requirements are becoming more sophisticated, with growing demand for greater legal signing control, deeper core-system integration and more flexible deployment. According to the report, Wallet-as-a-Service is gaining traction among retail- and payments-focused fintechs, while large banks are increasingly licensing self-custody technology and building client products on top of it. Another model is the one-stop shop: providers such as Ripple bring custody, settlement assets, payment rails, treasury and execution together under one offering, connecting the custody and control layer directly to the financial activities those assets support and reducing the need for separate integrations across each function.
The right model depends on each institution’s broader digital asset strategy, and increasingly may involve a combination of approaches. BCG finds that combining multiple custodians behind a common orchestration layer is becoming a market standard, making interoperability and orchestration important considerations for institutions looking to manage digital assets across multiple networks or environments.
The real value is in what custody makes possible
Custody is not a single use case. It underpins services such as tokenization, stablecoin issuance, payments, treasury, lending and collateral management. This shifts the business case for custody from cost and risk management toward broader financial value creation.
BCG estimates that a regional bank with a $200–300 billion balance sheet could improve its P&L by up to $100 million by combining digital asset use cases with the right custody decisions. The full report breaks down where that opportunity comes from.
What this means for institutions
For financial institutions, custody is no longer only an operational decision. It is a strategic one that shapes which digital finance services they can offer and how quickly. BCG expects the custody market to consolidate, with scale going to providers that vertically integrate, aggregate networks or embed modular infrastructure.
With more than a decade of experience building financial infrastructure, Ripple is helping institutions navigate this shift. Ripple Custody provides enterprise-grade infrastructure for securely managing digital assets, with governance, policy controls, and flexible deployment options designed to meet institutional requirements. As part of Ripple’s broader capabilities spanning stablecoins, payments, treasury, liquidity and trade execution, custody helps institutions move from holding digital assets to putting them to work.
Ready to go deeper? Read the full BCG report for the complete analysis of how custody is becoming the operating layer beneath digital finance.
