OCC Greenlights Crypto Trust Bank Charters, Reviving the FinTech Charter Debate 

Last week, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced conditional approvals for five national trust bank charter applications: de novo charters for First National Digital Currency Bank and Ripple National Trust Bank, and conversions to national trust-bank status for BitGo Bank & Trust, Fidelity Digital Assets and Paxos Trust Company.

The trust-bank model is designed to keep these firms inside a limited perimeter, focused on trust and custody activities rather than deposit-taking. Circle, whose USDC infrastructure is tied to the First National Digital Currency Bank application, framed the OCC decision as a milestone toward GENIUS Act compliance and said the bank would oversee USDC reserve management once fully approved.

In a recent blog post, Loeb & Loeb argued that the once-stalled debate over OCC-granted specialty charters has returned thanks to “cryptocurrency and a new regulatory approach.” The firm traced the current push back to the OCC’s 2016 effort to create a special purpose national bank charter for FinTechs.

 In Loeb’s telling, the appeal was straightforward: a national charter could (arguably) preempt a patchwork of state licensing and consumer law requirements, and—because the proposed FinTech charter would not permit deposits or require FDIC insurance—parent companies would avoid Bank Holding Company Act treatment. Lawsuits from the New York Department of Financial Services and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors dragged on for years, and by early 2021 the FinTech charter was considered dead.

Related: UK Treasury Eying New Rules for Crypto Firms

 With that option gone, crypto and fintech firms began hunting for a different onramp—one that still provides a federal footprint without the full regulatory load of a deposit bank. Loeb described the limited purpose national trust bank charter as the “frontrunning option,” precisely because these charters “do not allow for deposit taking,” which can deliver some fintech-charter benefits without the same structural consequences. The post credited the resurgence to a 2025 shift in tone: regulators began signaling openness through “new supervisory guidance, interpretive letters and speeches,” and Congress passed the GENIUS Act to create a regulatory framework for stablecoins.

Still, Loeb cautioned that the regulatory machinery moves slowly. “It will be some time before we have a newly chartered fintech or crypto-focused trust bank,” the blog post stated.

 Loeb also sketched the next round of friction points that will shape whether this charter burst becomes a durable channel or a short-lived policy experiment. The firm noted that, “as of the beginning of December,” the OCC listed six pending applications from limited-purpose trust companies seeking to engage in cryptocurrency and digital-asset activities—roughly the same number the agency received over the prior four years combined.

But applications and conditional approvals are only the beginning. Loeb expects a long review and approval process and a protracted launch timeline, and it stressed that regulations implementing the GENIUS Act “have yet to be proposed.”

 Bank industry challenges similar to the FinTech-charter fights are “highly likely,” Loeb adds, amid arguments that trust-bank charters can sidestep deposit insurance, consolidated supervision and full-service consumer protection frameworks—and even disputes over whether the National Bank Act permits trust companies to run payments activity. Add the possibility of another crypto winter, and the post’s message is clear: the charter door is open again, but the compliance and litigation gauntlet is just starting.