Agora Seeks US Bank Charter to Scale Digital Dollars

Stablecoin issuer Agora Finance has filed for a national trust bank charter as it looks to build its business in the United States.

The company filed its application for Agora National Trust Bank with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Agora CEO and Co-founder Nick van Eck wrote in a Friday (April 24) blog post.

Agora aims to secure the bank charter to open the door to the U.S. market under a unified federal framework now that its stablecoin issuance business is nearly two years old and its AUSD stablecoin has done tens of billions in transfer volume and served a variety of applications and use cases, according to the post.

The company designed AUSD to provide a stablecoin that businesses could use to move money across borders, manage payroll and handle payments, the post said.

Currently, Agora is operating in Bermuda with a full license. Now, the company aims to secure a national trust bank charter in the U.S. to create a direct relationship with federal regulators, operate under rules built for scale, and offer a comprehensive suite of regulated financial products to U.S. customers under a federal framework, per the post.

Beyond the stablecoin issuance it already offers, Agora is working on a full financial operating system for global businesses, including settlement infrastructure, treasury management, fiat connectivity, and tools that help businesses interact with digital dollars.

“The charter is the regulatory layer that makes all of that possible at scale,” van Eck wrote in the post. “Operating without a U.S. federal charter means renting the rails in the world’s most important financial market.”

When Agora raised $50 million in a Series A funding round in July 2025, the company wrote in an article on LinkedIn that it had shipped the foundational elements for AUSD and was deepening the connective tissue between the onchain and fiat infrastructure layers.

The company also announced the launch of its white-labeled stablecoin product designed to enable enterprises and teams to issue their own branded stablecoin in days.

“We aim to foster an ecosystem where creating, managing and integrating stablecoins becomes seamless so that every FinTech, exchange and enterprise can benefit from having its own stablecoin whether it be AUSD or new USD—as a product feature, revenue growth lever and strategic differentiator,” Agora wrote in the article.