The company announced Monday (Oct. 5) that it had applied to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to launch Modern Treasury National Trust Bank.
“If approved, Modern Treasury National Trust Bank would operate as a federally regulated, limited-purpose national trust bank under OCC supervision,” the company said in a news release.
The bank would give customers a “unified custody solution” that combines the Modern Treasury’s payments and settlement capabilities with digital asset and custody services, the release said. This would give customers a way to custody and move fiat and stablecoins, though the proposed bank would not issue stablecoins or make loans.
“We believe stablecoins are foundational economic infrastructure for the future,” said Matt Marcus, co-founder and CEO of Modern Treasury. “We have now fully integrated stablecoins to our payments platform. Pursuing this charter will add direct federally supervised digital asset custody and related services to the infrastructure our customers already use.”
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Modern Treasury said it will still offer payment infrastructure through its software and payment service provider, with the proposed bank functioning as a “separate, limited-purpose banking entity” that provides only OCC-permitted services.
Modern Treasury last year acquired Beam, combining that company’s stablecoin and fiat payment service with its own money movement infrastructure, creating a platform that includes traditional and stablecoin settlement rails.
The announcement comes as the OCC’s approval process for digital asset companies seeking banking charters is facing pushback from the banking industry.
The Independent Community Bankers of America sued the OCC last week, alleging the regulator is allowing crypto firms into the banking system without providing the same level of scrutiny faced by community banks.
“Congress did not create the national trust charter as a side door into the banking system for crypto firms seeking the credibility of a federal bank charter,” ICBA President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey said in a news release announcing the lawsuit.
The OCC declined to comment on the litigation.
In other stablecoin news, PYMNTS wrote recently that Wall Street’s embrace of digital assets has gotten to a point where saying a bank is “doing blockchain” explains almost nothing about its actual on-chain capabilities.
“One bank may be experimenting with tokenized securities inside an innovation lab,” that report said. “Another may let corporate customers move tokenized commercial-bank deposits around the clock, while a third may issue digital representations of real-world assets but still settle the cash leg through conventional infrastructure. And a handful are beginning to connect the pieces, putting both money and assets onto programmable rails.”
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