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OCC Issue First Regulatory Clarifications for Stablecoins The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) clarified national banks' and federal savings associations' authority to hold reserves on behalf of issuers of certain stablecoins. Stablecoin issuers have been using U.S. banks for years, but in an unclear regulatory environment. The clarification addresses the use of stablecoins backed by a single fiat currency on a one-to-one basis where the bank verifies at least daily that reserve account balances meet or exceed the number of the issuer's outstanding stablecoins. It applies only to situations where there is a hosted wallet, meaning wallets controlled by a trusted third party, as opposed to unhosted wallets that are controlled by the individual user who owns the cryptos being stored. https://www.occ.treas.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2020/nr-occ-2020-125.html

The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced last month that federally regulated banks could provide services to crypto startups in addition to custody. It turns out the OCC was already leaning toward the move before Acting Comptroller Brian Brooks took the top job at the agency. Indeed, the OCC has been examining the cryptocurrency space since at least 2018 and likely longer, because the very act of writing an interpretive letter typically takes months. Banks that are now interested in branching out into crypto should reach out to their local OCC supervisors if they have additional questions.

The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has granted Paxos provisional approval for a federal bank charter that will allow it to conduct business across state lines. This is the third such charter granted to a crypto company, after custody firm Anchorage in January, and trading and lending firm Protego in February. https://www.occ.treas.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2021/nr-occ-2021-49.html

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has proposed a rule preventing national banks from discriminating against businesses based on factors other than risk. This has ramifications for crypto-asset firms and money services businesses that have trouble accessing banking services. The OCC has compiled reports of independent ATM operators, family planning organizations, private prisons, gun sellers, and money services businesses being locked out of financial services. https://www.occ.treas.gov/news-issuances/federal-register/2020/nr-occ-2020-156a.pdf

Acting The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) Comptroller Brian Brooks recently announced the OCC's pivot to focus a fintech charter on nonbank payments companies. To accomplish this, Brooks claims the OCC has blanket authority under the National Bank Act to define what it means to be a bank. In some eyes this is an overstep of its reach to call anything that touches money a bank, which in the process, preempts state authority. Plus, the courts have previously determined the OCC lacks authority to issue charters to fintech companies that do not receive deposits because, under federal banking laws, the "business of banking" requires receiving deposits. And the court explicitly said that its decision applies nationwide.

The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued a final rule that creates a bright-line test to determine when a bank makes a loan and is the "true lender," including in the context of bank-fintech partnerships. The "true lender" question arose in the context of certain lending arrangements between banks and nonbank entities, in which the nonbank entity typically markets the loan, makes the credit decision and directs its bank partner to originate and temporarily hold the loan before purchasing it from the bank. https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2020/nr-occ-2020-139.html

The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) clarified that national banks and federal savings associations may participate in independent node verification networks (INVN) and use stablecoins to conduct payment activities and other bank-permissible functions. The OCC said INVNs "may be more resilient than other payment networks" due to the large number of nodes needed to verify transactions, which can in turn limit tampering.

The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) will no longer instruct banks to get prior sign-off before they engage in crypto-related activities - a standard that was set in 2022 that effectively blocked FDIC-supervised institutions from engaging in such activities as they waited for approvals that never came. Earlier in March 2025, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) rescinded its similar 2022 guidance. https://www.fdic.gov/news/financial-institution-letters/2025/fdic-clarifies-process-banks-engage-crypto-related https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2025/nr-occ-2025-16.html

The OCC Innovation Pilot Program would be offered only to OCC-regulated banks that need regulatory guidance on offering an innovative product or service to the market. A bank can partner with a fintech firm in the pilot or the bank can join others in offering a consortium-backed idea. The program is distinctly different from the OCC's new special-purpose charter that is open to a nonbank fintechs.

The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has has conditionally approved crypto-asset custodian Anchorage's application for a national trust charter, and the creation of Anchorage Digital Bank. With a banking charter, Anchorage can provide sub-custody services - like holding assets for a main custodian - for any financial institution. Anchorage is the first crypto company to receive a federal charter, though Kraken and Avanti have both received state charters for digital banking services in Wyoming. While the Wyoming charter enables both Kraken and Avanti to operate nationally, it comes with certain limitations. https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2021/nr-occ-2021-6.html

On January 4, 2021, the Chief Counsel of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency ("OCC") issued an interpretive letter ("IL 1174") on the permissibility of national banks to use independent node verification networks ("INVN") and stablecoins for payment activities. In particular, "[n]ational banks … may use new technologies, including … stablecoins, to perform bank permissible activities, such as payment activities." The letter, when coupled with other OCC interpretations, now firmly places the issuance and use of stablecoins as permissible bank activities. While stablecoins may also be securities under certain circumstances, there is a well-defined line of case law, including from the Supreme Court, about the factors to apply when determining whether a product that has characteristics of both a banking product and a security is one or the other (or both). Therefore, issuers and investors may now apply the age-old factors to bank-issued stablecoins and be comfortable about the regulatory characterization of the ultimate product.

Seattle-based Protego Trust Bank received conditional approval for a trust charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to custody digital assets. Protego is the second applicant to receive conditional approval from the OCC, following Anchorage. The newly chartered trust bank will also offer a trading platform for clients, a service for issuing new digital assets and a peer-to-peer lending platform for its clients.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) approved LendingClub's acquisition of Radius Bank. LendingClub had previously announced it would pay around $185 million to buy the bank. The merger is subject to certain conditions including day-one capital of $410 million, including a capital contribution from LendingClub of no less than $250 million. This marks the end of LendingClub's transition from the P2P lending model under which the company was launched to a digital banking model. https://www.occ.treas.gov/topics/charters-and-licensing/decision-letter-lending-club.pdf

The U.S. Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia opposing the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's (OCC) creation of a new national bank charter for nonbank companies and its acceptance and impending approval of a charter application from Figure Technologies. The complaint asserts that by creating a national bank charter for nonbank companies, the OCC has gone far beyond the limited authority granted to it by Congress under the National Bank Act and other federal banking laws.

According to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) national banks may provide cryptocurrency custody services on behalf of customers, including by holding the unique cryptographic keys associated with cryptocurrency. The OCC also reaffirmed that national banks may provide permissible banking services to any lawful business they choose, including cryptocurrency businesses, so long as they effectively manage the risks and comply with applicable law. JP Morgan is one such national bank which provides banking services to crypto companies (eg Gemini and Coinbase). https://occ.gov/topics/charters-and-licensing/interpretations-and-actions/2020/int1170.pdf

The chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is pushing the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to craft policy on crypto payments. In a September 1 letter from Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) to OCC acting comptroller Brian Brooks, the lawmaker said it would be "prudent" to provide clarity on payments in light of the office's recent announcement that national banks' and federal savings associations are eligible to custody cryptocurrency.

Digital asset custodian Anchorage is seeking a national charter from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). A banking charter would give Anchorage the clear authority to act as a "qualified custodian" for institutional investors under Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules. Most crypto custody firms in the U.S. have trust company licenses, but the SEC has signaled that it is unsure whether such entities, regulated at the state level and less stringently than banks, make the cut as qualified custodians. https://apps.occ.gov/CAAS_CATS/CAAS_Details.aspx?FilingTypeID=23&FilingID=317667&FilingSubtypeID=1117 https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/statement-im-finhub-wyoming-nal-custody-digital-assets

The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency proposed an Innovation Pilot Program, designed to provide OCC-supervised entities with regulatory input early in the testing of innovative activities.

The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) stablecoin letter only address the permissibility of managing reserves for hosted wallets, which requires client onboarding and know-your-customer (KYC), and therefore limits its discussion to private stablecoin networks, and argues that this activity "would not contribute to the global and systemic nature noted" by the FSB. In contrast, the OCC may be suggesting that a public stablecoin's network design, once launched, could not be walked back, and (absent controls) could provide new avenues for illicit activity at a speed and global scale not currently available.

U.S. Representative Maxine Waters, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, wants President-elect Joe Biden to rescind or monitor all of the crypto-asset-related guidance issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). She called on Biden to rescind guidance by the OCC that national banks may hold stablecoin reserves as a service to bank customers, along with similar guidance that allowed federally chartered banks and federal savings associations to provide crypto-asset custody services for customers. https://financialservices.house.gov/uploadedfiles/120420_cmw_ltr_to_biden.pdf