How to Send XRP: Exchange, Wallet and Everything In Between

What you need before you send

Three things, and only three. Get them right and moving XRP is one of the easiest things in crypto. Get one wrong and it can be one of the most expensive.

A destination address — an XRP Ledger address starts with a lowercase r and runs 25 to 35 characters. Copy and paste it, never type it.
A destination tag, if the receiver is an exchange — a number that tells the exchange which customer a deposit belongs to. Exchanges share one address across thousands of users, so without the tag your XRP lands in a pool with nothing attached to your name.
Enough XRP — the amount you are sending, plus the network fee, plus the 1 XRP account reserve that stays behind in your own wallet.

Some wallets and exchanges accept an X-address instead. That is a single string beginning with X that carries the address and the destination tag together, so there is nothing separate to forget. Use it when both sides support it.

The reserve, and why a new wallet needs a first deposit

An XRP Ledger account does not exist until it is funded. Creating a wallet in an app generates a key pair and an address, but the ledger knows nothing about it until someone sends XRP there.

That first payment has to cover the base reserve, which has been 1 XRP since the December 2024 reduction from 10 XRP (checked September 2026). Send 0.5 XRP to a brand-new address and the transaction fails: the ledger will not create an account it cannot fund. Your XRP stays with you, minus the fee.

That 1 XRP is not a fee. It sits in the account and cannot be spent while the account exists. Each extra object the account owns, such as a trust line, locks a further 0.2 XRP. If you want a wallet holding 100 spendable XRP, send 101.

What the ledger charges, and how long it takes

The XRP Ledger transaction cost is 10 drops, or 0.00001 XRP, a small fraction of a cent (checked September 2026). It rises temporarily when the network is busy, and it is destroyed rather than paid to anyone. No validator collects it. It exists to make spam expensive.

Settlement takes 3 to 5 seconds, and once your transaction is in a validated ledger it is final. There is no confirmation count to wait out and no way to reverse it. That is the whole reason to check the address and the tag twice.

The three transfers at a glance

Transfer	Address needed	Destination tag	Typical cost	Typical time
Exchange to your own wallet	Your own r-address	No	Exchange withdrawal fee, often 0.02 to 0.5 XRP	Minutes, after the exchange review
Wallet to wallet	The receiving r-address	No	0.00001 XRP	3 to 5 seconds
Exchange to exchange	The exchange deposit r-address	Yes, always	Sending exchange withdrawal fee	Minutes, longer if credited by hand

One exception to the No column: a few custodial services do ask for a tag. Use whatever the receiving side displays, and never invent one.

Step by step: exchange to your own wallet

Open your wallet and copy the receiving address, shown behind a Receive button.
In the exchange, go to withdrawals, pick XRP, and choose the XRP Ledger network if a network menu appears.
Paste the address. Compare the first and last four characters against your wallet on screen: clipboard-hijacking malware swaps addresses silently.
Leave the destination tag empty, unless your wallet asked for one.
If the wallet is new and unfunded, send at least 1 XRP on top of the exchange fee.
Confirm with your two-factor code, then wait. A first withdrawal from a new account can sit in a security hold for 24 to 48 hours.

Step by step: wallet to wallet

Get the receiving address, ideally by scanning a QR code rather than pasting from a message.
Enter the amount, and check the sending wallet still keeps 1 XRP plus the fee afterwards. Otherwise the transaction is rejected.
Leave the tag blank.
Sign and send. The receiving wallet should show the balance within about five seconds.

If the receiving wallet is brand new, that first payment doubles as the activation payment, so it has to be at least 1 XRP.

Step by step: exchange to exchange

This is the transfer most likely to go wrong, because the tag is mandatory and the address is shared.

On the receiving exchange, open the XRP deposit page. It gives you an address and a tag. Copy both.
Check whether that page also names a minimum deposit. Smaller amounts are sometimes lost rather than returned.
On the sending exchange, paste the address, then paste the tag into the destination tag field. Not the memo field, not the reference field.
Read the confirmation screen back against the deposit page before you approve anything.
Confirm and wait. Settlement takes seconds, but crediting depends on the receiving exchange and whether it credits automatically.

Withdrawal fees and minimums vary more than you expect

The ledger charges 0.00001 XRP. Exchanges charge what they like on top, and the spread is wide: commonly 0.02 to 0.5 XRP as of September 2026, with some platforms well above that and a few waiving the fee in promotions. That is thousands of times the real network cost, and a business decision rather than a technical one.

Most exchanges also set a minimum withdrawal, frequently around 20 XRP, and some a daily cap tied to your verification level. Check both on the withdrawal screen itself. Published fee tables go stale quickly, so trust the number shown at the moment you withdraw.

Whitelists, address books and holds

Most exchanges make you save a withdrawal address before you can use it, as an address book or a whitelist. Saving one usually needs an email confirmation and a two-factor code, and many platforms then block withdrawals to that address for 24 hours.

Turn the whitelist on where your exchange offers it. It means an attacker who gets into your account still cannot send your XRP anywhere you have not already approved.

Checking the payment on an explorer

Every XRP payment gets a transaction hash, a 64-character string of letters and numbers. The sending wallet or exchange shows it once the transaction is submitted.

Paste that hash into any XRP Ledger explorer and look at the result field. tesSUCCESS means the payment was validated and delivered. Anything else is a failure code. The two you are most likely to meet are tecNO_DST_INSUF_XRP, meaning the destination account does not exist and your payment was too small to create it, and tecUNFUNDED_PAYMENT, meaning your balance would have fallen below the reserve.

A validated tesSUCCESS with the right address and tag is your proof of payment. If an exchange has not credited a deposit, that hash is the first thing support will ask for.

Send a small one first

Before any transfer that would hurt to lose, send a test. To a new wallet it has to be at least 1 XRP so the account activates. To an address that already exists, a couple of XRP is plenty.

Wait until it actually appears on the other side. Not until the explorer says tesSUCCESS, but until the receiving balance changes. Then send the rest, reusing the same saved address. One extra withdrawal fee is cheap against the alternative.

The four ways this goes wrong

Wrong network

XRP lives on the XRP Ledger. A bridged version lives on the XRPL EVM sidechain, launched in June 2025, which uses Ethereum-style addresses beginning with 0x. They are not the same rail. If a withdrawal screen offers a network choice, pick the one the receiving side named. XRP sent to a 0x address from the XRP Ledger does not arrive, and in most cases nobody holds a key that can retrieve it.

Missing or wrong destination tag

Your XRP reaches the exchange but is not attributed to you. This is recoverable more often than the internet suggests. Open a support ticket immediately with the transaction hash, the amount, the timestamp and the tag you should have used. Expect a wait, and at some exchanges a recovery fee. A wrong tag that matches another customer is much harder to unwind.

Unactivated destination account

You send 0.5 XRP to an address that has never been funded. The transaction fails with tecNO_DST_INSUF_XRP, your XRP stays in your account, and you lose only the fee. Annoying rather than damaging: send at least 1 XRP and try again.

Exchange maintenance and paused withdrawals

Exchanges suspend XRP withdrawals for wallet maintenance, ledger upgrades and their own risk reasons, sometimes without notice and for days. Nothing is lost, but nothing moves either. If you have a deadline, do not leave the transfer to the last hour.

The short version

Copy the address, never retype it, and check the first and last characters after pasting.
Include the destination tag whenever the receiver is an exchange, and leave it out otherwise.
Send at least 1 XRP to any address that has never been funded.
Keep 1 XRP plus the fee in the sending account.
Test with a small amount, wait for it to land, then send the rest.
Keep the transaction hash until the balance shows up on the other side.

None of this is investment advice, and none of it makes a transfer reversible. On the XRP Ledger, care before you press send is the only protection there is.