Ripple wins final OCC nod for national trust bank as charter fight heads to court

Ripple has received final approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to open Ripple National Trust Bank, completing a process that began with a conditional green light last December. The federally chartered trust bank will look after the reserves backing RLUSD, Ripple's dollar stablecoin, and offer custody of digital assets to institutions. The timing is notable. A banking trade group is in federal court trying to undo the legal basis for charters like this one, and the GENIUS Act's stablecoin regime switches on in January.

What happened

Ripple disclosed the final approval on Monday, Oct. 26, and it was reported the next day by Cointelegraph, CoinDesk, Cryptopolitan and The Cryptonomist, among others. The company filed its application in July 2025. The OCC granted conditional approval on Dec. 12, 2025, in the same batch that cleared Circle as a new national trust bank and allowed BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets and Paxos to convert their state trust companies to federal ones. Conditional approval meant the firms still had to satisfy the OCC on capital, governance and risk management before opening.

Under the structure Ripple described, the new bank has three jobs. It will manage the segregated reserves that back RLUSD. It will act as collateral trustee for the benefit of the coin's holders. And once it opens, it will provide fiduciary custody of digital assets for institutional clients. Issuance of RLUSD itself does not move. That stays with Standard Custody & Trust Company, a New York limited-purpose trust company that Ripple bought in 2024 and that is supervised by the New York Department of Financial Services. In practice, New York will keep watching how the token is minted and redeemed, while a federal bank regulator oversees where the reserve money sits.

RLUSD launched in December 2024 and has a market value of roughly $2.5 billion, according to Ripple. That makes it a small player. Data cited by Cryptopolitan puts its share of a roughly $310 billion stablecoin market at under 1%, against about 82% for Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC combined.

A national trust bank is a narrow kind of bank. It holds and manages assets for clients, but it generally does not take deposits, make loans or carry FDIC insurance. Ripple is not the first crypto firm to reach this point. Circle received its final OCC approval on July 10. Coinbase won conditional approval in April, and Crypto.com and Stripe-owned Bridge have held conditional approvals since February.

Chief executive Brad Garlinghouse marked the news on X, arguing that crypto and banks "work better together." Markets were unmoved. XRP traded around $1.25 to $1.30 on Tuesday, and analysts at Marex told CoinDesk the charter creates no requirement for anyone to buy the token.

The debate

The approval arrives in the middle of an open legal fight over the charter model itself. On Oct. 2, the Independent Community Bankers of America sued the OCC and Comptroller Jonathan Gould in federal court in Washington, D.C. The group is challenging a final rule the OCC adopted in March 2026 on the activities national trust banks may conduct, along with a 2021 interpretive letter that Gould wrote while serving as the agency's chief counsel. It is also asking the court to vacate one specific conditional approval, for Protego, granted in February.

The community bankers' central argument is that the OCC has turned a limited trust charter into a back entrance to the banking system. In their telling, the firms gain the credibility and federal preemption that come with a national bank charter without the matching obligations, such as deposit insurance, consolidated supervision, full capital and liquidity standards and Community Reinvestment Act duties. The complaint says the OCC has approved or conditionally approved 21 trust banks under the current administration, at least 13 of them crypto companies. It also contends that the GENIUS Act, which takes effect by Jan. 18, 2027, cannot retroactively cure charters already granted. Ripple is not named in the suit, but a ruling against the March rule would cast doubt on the foundation its charter rests on. The OCC had not publicly responded to the suit, according to reports at the time.

Political criticism predates the lawsuit. In May, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, wrote to Gould arguing that the crypto charters fall outside what the National Bank Act allows. Her letter said the business plans involved little true fiduciary work and leaned instead on custody, payments and stablecoin activity that resembles deposit-taking. Bank lobbyists made similar points when the first conditional approvals came out last December, and the Bank Policy Institute said firms doing bank-like business should seek full bank charters.

The industry's response is that a trust charter covers fiduciary and custody work only and that firms are volunteering for federal supervision they could otherwise avoid. The Digital Chamber made that case in reply to Warren. From that angle, putting stablecoin reserves under a federal bank examiner is more oversight, not less, compared with the state-only arrangements most issuers have used until now.

There is also a separate question the charter does not settle. Ripple applied in 2025 for a Federal Reserve master account, which would let it hold RLUSD reserves directly at the central bank. That request is still pending, Cryptopolitan reported. A national charter improves an applicant's standing, but the Fed decides independently. Custodia Bank, which held only a state charter, was ultimately refused after a long fight.

What it means

For RLUSD, the immediate change is structural rather than commercial. Reserve management and custody now sit inside a federally supervised bank, which is the kind of setup large institutions and their compliance teams tend to look for before they hold a stablecoin on their balance sheets. Whether that translates into meaningful growth against USDT and USDC is a separate and open question.

The bigger story is regulatory timing. The OCC announced its final rule implementing the GENIUS Act on Oct. 21. That rule takes effect with the law on Jan. 18, 2027, and requires covered issuers to hold reserves at least equal to the stablecoins outstanding, to generally process redemptions within two business days, and not to pay holders interest simply for holding the token. It also reaches OCC-supervised firms that custody payment stablecoin reserves, regardless of who supervises the issuer. That is exactly the role Ripple's new bank is designed to fill. Separately, CoinDesk reported on Monday that the OCC is encouraging community banks to get into stablecoin payments, a sign the agency wants traditional lenders inside the market rather than only crypto-native firms.

Three things are worth watching from here. First, the ICBA case, where any ruling on the March rule would affect every crypto trust bank, not just the one challenged by name. Second, how many of the remaining conditional approvals, including Coinbase, Crypto.com and Bridge, turn final before the GENIUS Act deadline. Third, the Fed's handling of master-account requests from newly chartered crypto firms, which will determine how close these institutions can get to the core of the U.S. payment system.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice.

Sources

• Cointelegraph · Ripple secures final OCC approval for national trust bank
• Cryptopolitan · Ripple wins final OCC approval for national trust bank
• Axios · OCC conditionally approves 5 crypto firms for national trust bank charters
• Decrypt · Banking group sues to block crypto's "side door" into the banking system
• Senate Banking Committee · Warren presses OCC on crypto trust charters
• Financial Services Perspectives · OCC finalizes GENIUS Act rule