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Head-to-head · Stablecoins

PayPal USD (PYUSD) vs Ripple USD (RLUSD) PayPal USD (PYUSD) leads by 4 points.

PayPal USD (PYUSD) scores 4 points above Ripple USD (RLUSD), led by counterparty and insolvency rank, redemption right exercised, and seizure and upgrade authority. PayPal USD (PYUSD) ranks #1 and Ripple USD (RLUSD) #3 of 11 published stablecoins. Every term of the gap is on the ledger below; the inputs are on the audit receipt.

PayPal USD (PYUSD)79
Ripple USD (RLUSD)75
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99 · ranks #1 and #3 of 11
Methodology v2026.10.18Ranking snapshot Evidence verified through 4 published criteria5 score dimensions Receipt #cc-VS-PAYPAL-USD-PYUSD-VS-RIPPLE-USD-RLUSD-dd7c4d10
Published verdictRanking snapshot 3 November 2026

PayPal USD (PYUSD) leads by 4 points

PayPal USD (PYUSD) scores 4 points above Ripple USD (RLUSD), led by counterparty and insolvency rank, redemption right exercised, and seizure and upgrade authority.

PayPal USD (PYUSD) #1 of 1179
Ripple USD (RLUSD) #3 of 1175
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99; a bar is empty at 41 and full at 99.
Why, term by termPayPal USD (PYUSD) leads on 3 of 4 published criteria; Ripple USD (RLUSD) on 1. The terms sum to the gap.
TermPayPal USD (PYUSD)Ripple USD (RLUSD)WeightPoints
Counterparty and insolvency rank7/105/107.2+3.7for PayPal USD (PYUSD)+1.9 of 32
Redemption right exercised8/105/106.7+5.2for PayPal USD (PYUSD)+2.7 of 32
Reserve and assurance scope4/108/105.8−6.0for Ripple USD (RLUSD)−3.1 of 32
Seizure and upgrade authority6/105/104.3+1.1for PayPal USD (PYUSD)+0.6 of 32
Net of the terms+4.1
Reproduced gap+4.2
Published gapAfter score rounding and bounds — see the note below7975+4.0

Weight is in points of the 86-point weighted total. Points are score points of the gap between the two.

Quick facts

At a glance

2 of 3 rows read the same for both.
FactPayPal USD (PYUSD)Ripple USD (RLUSD)
PricingSnapshotISSUER SIDE, binding terms (https://paxos.com/stablecoin-terms-conditions/ → www.paxos.com/terms-and-conditions/stablecoin-terms-conditions, “Last Modified: June 30, 2026”, fetched 29 September 2026). Fee: §2.8.2.1 “Paxos will not charge you fees for redeeming USD Stablecoins.” Minimum: §2.7.4 “Paxos may require a minimum amount for redemption, which may be updated from time to time, equal to the minimum wire fee charged by your bank for the transaction.” Rate: §2.7.1 “ALL REDEMPTIONS WILL BE ON A ONE-FOR-ONE BASIS, NOTWITHSTANDING ANY CHANGE IN THE MARKET VALUE OF THE RESERVE ASSETS BACKING USD STABLECOINS.” A reserve fee accrues to the issuer, §2.8.1.2: “We will apply a fee to reserves backing USD Stablecoins, and you agree to pay us such fee as determined by an appropriate market rate, provided that no fee will be imposed that reduces the USD Stablecoin reserves to below the amount of USD Stablecoins outstanding.” The schedule itself is NOT on this page — §2.8.1.1 defers it: “An overview of our fees is set forth in the Paxos User Guide at https://help.paxos.com or otherwise in a pricing supplement provided to you by Paxos separate from this USD Stablecoin Agreement” || RETAIL SIDE, https://www.paypal.com/us/digital-wallet/manage-money/crypto/pyusd (fetched 29 September 2026): “There are no fees to buy, sell, hold or transfer PYUSD to eligible PayPal users.” and “You can buy and sell 1 PYUSD for 1 USD on PayPal.” || RETAIL SIDE, THE FULL FEE PAGE, https://www.paypal.com/us/digital-wallet/paypal-consumer-fees (fetched 29 September 2026). Buy/sell table, general crypto: “1.00 - 74.99 USD” “2.20%”, “75.00 – 200.00 USD” “2.00%”, “200.01 – 1000.00 USD” “1.80%”, “1000.01 USD +” “1.50%”, followed by “The fees above do not apply to buying and selling PYUSD”. Transfers: “Receiving a crypto transfer” “No fee”; “Transferring crypto to another PayPal or Venmo branded cryptocurrency account” “No fee”; to an outside address “You will be charged a cryptocurrency network fee, payable in the crypto you transfer, which varies.” Bundled one-step flows ONLY: “For PYUSD, you will pay 1.5% on the USD value of the PYUSD that you transfer to your external wallet.” and “For PYUSD, you will pay 1.5% on the USD value of the PYUSD that you receive from your external wallet.” Disclosed but unquantified for PYUSD: “The exchange rate you’ll see before buying or selling crypto will also include a cryptocurrency conversion spread”. No minimum or maximum PYUSD amount is published on either PayPal page. || MARKETING HEADLINE, paxos.com/pyusd (fetched 29 September 2026): “Zero fees to convert PYUSD to USD with PayPal and Paxos”. || TYPED RATE (label, not a quote): spreadPct = 0 — i.e. a 0% spread on the par (one-for-one) redemption, resting on §2.8.2.1 and §2.7.1 above. The 1.5% applies only to the bundled one-step flows and is not typed.NO FEE SCHEDULE AND NO MINIMUM IS PUBLISHED ANYWHERE — a silence finding, re-established on 29 September 2026. (1) THE BINDING TERMS, https://ripple.com/legal/stablecoin/ (still stamped "Last updated: October 3, 2024", fetched 29 September 2026): the string "Fee" appears exactly once, in §11.10: "Although a Customer can always redeem one (1) RLUSD for 1 U.S. dollar ($1) with Ripple, less Fees, Ripple cannot control how third parties quote or value RLUSD, and Ripple is not responsible for any losses or other issues that may result from fluctuations in the value of RLUSD." "Fees" is capitalised as a defined term and defined nowhere in this document; the definition belongs to the RLUSD Customer Agreement. "minimum" also occurs once, about the Reserve's market value, not about redemption. (2) THE GOVERNING DOCUMENT IS UNREACHABLE: https://ripple.com/legal/ returns HTTP 404; the legal navigation on the terms page still lists eleven documents and the RLUSD Customer Agreement is not among them; https://ripple.com/legal/rlusd-customer-agreement/ and https://ripple.com/legal/stablecoin-customer-agreement/ both returned HTTP 404 on 29 September 2026. (3) THE OTHER ISSUER SURFACES ARE SILENT: the whitepaper (https://ripple.com/reports/rlusd-whitepaper.pdf, "Version date — June 4, 2026") describes the issuance and redemption flows and states no fee, no minimum ticket and no settlement deadline; the transparency page (https://ripple.com/products/stablecoin/transparency/) says "redemptions with strict SLAs" and publishes no SLA, fee or minimum. (4) WHAT IS PUBLISHED INSTEAD, AND IT IS NOT A PRICE: the whitepaper's eligibility rule, "RLUSD is distributed to enterprise partners only. Ripple will not conduct B2C transactions", and its reserve buffer, "to ensure the total value of RLUSD reserve assets always equals at least 103% of the total RLUSD in circulation". An undisclosed price is not the same as a low one; this record scores it as an absence, not a benefit — no list price is published, so cost cannot be compared before a sales conversation.
Asset coverageEditorial——
Region fitSnapshotglobalglobal
From the published criteria

Which should you pick?

PayPal USD (PYUSD)

79#1 of 11
Leads
Pick it when
Pick PayPal USD (PYUSD) if counterparty and insolvency rank matters most — it scores 7/10 to Ripple USD (RLUSD)'s 5/10 there (weight 30).
Strength
Redemption right exercised — 8/10
Tradeoff
The protections are scoped to Paxos account-holders; the powers are scoped to everyone. §3.5.6 says the freeze, seizure, forfeiture and destruction section “This Section 3.5 applies to all holders of USD Stablecoins, regardless of whether the holder is a Customer of Paxos.” — but §2.2.2 says “Only Customers may purchase USD Stablecoins from us or redeem USD Stablecoins from us.” and the bankruptcy-remoteness sentence at §3.2.3.1 is framed as “Your assets held with Paxos Trust” and sits inside a subsection headed “3.2.3. Pass-Through Insurance Option.” Buy PYUSD on an exchange, hold it in your own wallet, and you are inside the seizure clause and outside the redemption clause. Note that the prior draft's second complaint — that PayPal's 1:1 zero-fee conversion does not reach on-chain coins — was WRONG and has been withdrawn: “Fee Table: Transferring a cryptocurrency Transfer Type Fee Receiving a crypto transfer No fee Transferring crypto to another PayPal or Venmo branded cryptocurrency account No fee Transferring crypto to an address outside of PayPal or Venmo You will be charged a cryptocurrency network fee, payable in the crypto you transfer, which varies.” The 1.5% applies only to PayPal's bundled one-step buy-and-transfer and transfer-and-sell flows. The real qualification on the PayPal leg is legal, not priced: the counterparty there is PayPal Digital, Inc., where “You do not own any specific, identifiable, Crypto Asset.” and “Crypto Assets, including PYUSD, are not insured by FDIC, SIPC or any other public or private insurer, including against cyber theft or theft by other means.”

Ripple USD (RLUSD)

75#3 of 11
Pick it when
Pick Ripple USD (RLUSD) if reserve and assurance scope matters most — it scores 8/10 to PayPal USD (PYUSD)'s 4/10 there (weight 24).
Strength
Reserve and assurance scope — 8/10
Tradeoff
The regulatory scaffolding around RLUSD is genuinely better than most of this pool, and the reserve disclosure is the best in it — CUSIP-level, Deloitte-examined, monthly, with a named custodian. None of that is the same thing as a claim you can enforce, and the gap between the two is this record's whole point. The binding RLUSD User Terms say the reserve is “segregated from SCTC's other assets” and then say, in the same subsection, “RLUSD does not convey any direct or indirect property interest in or right to withdraw any assets held in the Reserve”, and later that “Ripple does not provide any trust or fiduciary services to any User under these Terms.” Meanwhile the whitepaper says deposits are “held specifically for the benefit of RLUSD holders”, the attestation criteria say the Reserve holds assets “on behalf of RLUSD holders”, and the OCC letter describes “collateral trustee services for the benefit of RLUSD holders on a fiduciary basis” — for a bank that does not yet exist, under an approval the OCC expressly labels preliminary. The contract governs, and it gives the holder a segregation covenant with no stated insolvency rank, no property interest and no fiduciary duty. Second caveat, on comparability: the 2026-09-29 re-read raised criterion 2 from 4 to 5, the bottom of the band the methodology names for RLUSD, and level with USDC. The terms grant every holder a redemption right and then condition it on becoming a Customer, and the 2026 whitepaper's gate is the same shape as Circle Mint's closure to individuals, which the ladder already weighs for USDC in that band: “Ripple will not conduct B2C transactions.” Third: the terms are stale in a way that matters. They are stamped “Last updated: October 3, 2024” — and still so on 2026-09-29, almost two years on — and in the interim the OCC preliminarily approved a Ripple national trust bank intended to hold the reserve as collateral trustee. If that bank opens, the custody architecture behind this coin changes and the binding document describing it will not have moved. Finally, one number that is not a defect but should not be misread: the LEI on the current whitepaper resolves to the right company with entity status ACTIVE, but its GLEIF REGISTRATION status is LAPSED. Those are different fields; a lapsed identifier registration is not a lapsed charter, and it is scored as nothing more. Two things changed when every document was read again. First, the NYDFS redeemability question is settled, in Ripple's favour on the gate itself: the June 8, 2022 guidance, retrieved this session as bytes from the Internet Archive's raw replay of the dfs.ny.gov URL, confers a par redemption right on “any lawful holder” but expressly subjects it to “reasonable, non-burdensome conditions … such as the ability of the stablecoin holder to onboard successfully with the Issuer before redeeming.” The regulator permits the onboarding gate. What the regulator also requires — “clear, conspicuous redemption policies, approved in advance by DFS in writing”, with a default of T+2 where the issuer does not state its own — Ripple does not publish, which is why criterion 2 goes no higher than 5, the bottom of its band. Second, criterion 4 scores 5, not 6: the chain has twenty role grants; the MINTER and BURNER roles are held not only behind the multisig but also by a Wormhole NttManager proxy that appears in no Ripple document; and because MultiSign weights signatures, replacing the code takes three signatures, not seven. The freeze power had been exercised 192 times by August 2026; the 2026-09-29 re-read counts 214 against 214 distinct addresses since August 2024, 22 of them new and most on 2026-08-25, with not a single reversal and no published record of any of it. Nothing in the reserve or the attestation changed; the CUSIP schedule was re-read position by position and every figure reproduced.
Self-identify in 10 seconds

Which one is actually for you?

PayPal USD (PYUSD)Leads

Choose PayPal USD (PYUSD) if counterparty and insolvency rank matters most

  • Counterparty and insolvency rank: 7/10 against 5/10 for Ripple USD (RLUSD) (weight 30)
  • Redemption right exercised: 8/10 against 5/10 for Ripple USD (RLUSD) (weight 28)
  • Seizure and upgrade authority: 6/10 against 5/10 for Ripple USD (RLUSD) (weight 18)
Ripple USD (RLUSD)

Choose Ripple USD (RLUSD) if reserve and assurance scope matters most

  • Reserve and assurance scope: 8/10 against 4/10 for PayPal USD (PYUSD) (weight 24)
Criterion by criterion

Scorecard

Published criteria · weight in points of 868 of 8 cells scored. Strength is read from the evidence file; the weight is the published one. Methodology

Counterparty and insolvency rank

by 2 of 10weight 7.2 of 86PayPal USD (PYUSD) leads
PayPal USD (PYUSD)7 out of 10
Ripple USD (RLUSD)5 out of 10

Redemption right exercised

by 3 of 10weight 6.7 of 86PayPal USD (PYUSD) leads
PayPal USD (PYUSD)8 out of 10
Ripple USD (RLUSD)5 out of 10

Reserve and assurance scope

by 4 of 10weight 5.8 of 86Ripple USD (RLUSD) leads
PayPal USD (PYUSD)4 out of 10
Ripple USD (RLUSD)8 out of 10

Seizure and upgrade authority

by 1 of 10weight 4.3 of 86PayPal USD (PYUSD) leads
PayPal USD (PYUSD)6 out of 10
Ripple USD (RLUSD)5 out of 10

Score dimensions

weights sum to 86

The published score is five dimensions, each weighted for the category. "Published criteria" is the criteria block above; the other four are the engine's own terms — availability, friction, trust record, measured data. Each bar is one side's points out of that dimension's maximum; the weight beside the name is its points of the 86-point weighted total. The published criteria above can fill 24 of the block’s 30. A weight marked “constant here” belongs to a dimension every ranked product in the category holds at the same value: it still counts in the total, and it orders nothing here.

Availabilityweight 20 of 86 · constant here
PayPal USD (PYUSD)14/20Ripple USD (RLUSD)14/20
Tie
Published criteriaweight 30 of 86
PayPal USD (PYUSD)15.3/30Ripple USD (RLUSD)13.7/30
PayPal USD (PYUSD) leads
Frictionweight 10 of 86 · constant here
PayPal USD (PYUSD)2.7/10Ripple USD (RLUSD)2.7/10
Tie
Trust recordweight 8 of 86 · constant here
PayPal USD (PYUSD)3.2/8Ripple USD (RLUSD)3.2/8
Tie
Measured dataweight 18 of 86 · constant here
PayPal USD (PYUSD)8.3/18Ripple USD (RLUSD)8.3/18
Tie
Decision rulePublished order

Choose PayPal USD (PYUSD) unless the term Ripple USD (RLUSD) leads on is the one you are buying.

Pick Ripple USD (RLUSD) if reserve and assurance scope matters most — it scores 8/10 to PayPal USD (PYUSD)'s 4/10 there (weight 24).

The published order weighs every criterion the same way for everyone. To weigh them your way, run .

From the published order

Next best action

If this isn't your case

Other matchups worth comparing

How you can lose money here, and what the ranking scores
  • Control failure: a key or vote changes the rules, freezes or mints.
    Scored by Who can freeze, burn or replace your balance — and have they? · 18% (PayPal USD (PYUSD) 6/10, Ripple USD (RLUSD) 5/10)
  • Insolvency failure: the firm or issuer that owes you cannot pay.
    Scored by Who exactly owes you the dollar, and where do you rank when they fail? · 30% (PayPal USD (PYUSD) 7/10, Ripple USD (RLUSD) 5/10)
    Scored by What is really behind it, and what did the third party actually opine on? · 24% (PayPal USD (PYUSD) 4/10, Ripple USD (RLUSD) 8/10)
  • Exit failure: you cannot get out at par, on time, or with what is yours.
    Scored by Can the person actually holding it get a dollar back at par — and has anyone, at size? · 28% (PayPal USD (PYUSD) 8/10, Ripple USD (RLUSD) 5/10)
Not assessed by this ranking: Contract failure, Custody failure, Regulatory failure, Information failure. A high place says nothing about these; the Methodology tab says what each means.
Questions

Frequently asked questions

PayPal USD (PYUSD) scores 4 points above Ripple USD (RLUSD), led by counterparty and insolvency rank, redemption right exercised, and seizure and upgrade authority. Published scores, out of 100: PayPal USD (PYUSD) 79 (rank 1 of 11 stablecoins), Ripple USD (RLUSD) 75 (rank 3 of 11).

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Written and reviewed by Founder
Reviewed Next review by Methodology v2026.10.18
How this page is reviewed

Reviewed means both products compared here was read against its sources on or after that date; every ranked category is re-read at least every 45 days. Models research, extract and parse. A deterministic engine ranks. Every quote passes an adversarial refute pass.

Accountable for this review: Mathias Siemonsmeier, Founder.

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