OCC Applies Bank Secrecy Act to Stablecoin Issuers

U.S. banking regulators want to apply new compliance standards to stablecoin issuers.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued a proposed rulemaking Monday (June 22) that would require permitted payment stablecoin issuers (PPSI) under its supervision to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act and sections of the GENIUS Act.

PPSIs would also have to follow “applicable regulations” from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the OCC said in its announcement.

These include “any anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) program, sanctions program, and reporting requirements.”

The rules would also “create a supervision and enforcement framework for OCC-supervised PPSIs’ AML/CFT programs,” as well as a framework for “consultation between the OCC and FinCEN when the OCC intends to initiate an AML/CFT enforcement action or a significant AML/CFT supervisory action.”

The rule would also allow PPSIs to share with the FinCEN director “certain nonpublic OCC information” related to current or potential AML/CFT enforcement action or substantial AML/CFT supervisory action, the OCC said.

The proposed rule comes days after the OCC and other agencies began seeking comment from the public on a plan to require certain payment stablecoin issuers to maintain a customer identification program.

“The proposal would introduce requirements for these stablecoin issuers that are comparable to customer identification program requirements for banks and credit unions,” the Federal Reserve Board said in a news release last week.

Joining the Fed and the OCC were FinCEN, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA).

Also last week, PYMNTS’ From the Block podcast looked at the digital asset regulation landscape in a conversation with Mike Katz, partner in Manatt’s Financial Services Group.

“It’s almost a full-time job to keep up with all the changes on the legislative front, on the regulatory front, on the technological front,” Katz said.

The industry’s future, against this backdrop, will hinge less on technological breakthroughs than on whether businesses, regulators and institutions can create systems people trust.

“It’s not like, ‘This is how a regulator has interpreted this for the last 40 years.’ It’s more like, ‘These rules are not yet final, but we think it’s going in this direction,’” Katz said, adding that, contrary to popular stereotypes, most companies are not trying to recklessly race ahead.