Ripple says the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has given final approval for Ripple National Trust Bank, a federally supervised national trust bank that will look after the reserves behind the company’s RLUSD stablecoin. In a press release dated 26 October, Ripple said the OCC “today announced” the approval, about ten months after the regulator granted a conditional one.
Chief executive Brad Garlinghouse repeated the news on X late on Monday, writing that the OCC “has granted final approval” and that the charter gives Ripple “a federally supervised platform to support $RLUSD and provide digital asset custody to enterprises”. The OCC had not published notice of the final approval at the time of writing. Its December 2025 conditional approval letter, CA1359, covered only the first step, so for now the final approval rests on Ripple’s own account.
In brief
- Ripple says the OCC has given final approval to Ripple National Trust Bank, following conditional approval in December 2025.
- The bank will manage RLUSD’s segregated reserves, act as collateral trustee for holders and offer fiduciary digital asset custody.
- RLUSD will still be issued by Ripple’s New York-regulated trust company; the new bank adds federal supervision around it.
- The OCC had not published its own notice of the final approval at the time of writing; its December letter covered only the conditional first step and set capital and liquidity conditions.
What the bank will do
According to Ripple, the bank’s approved activities are managing the segregated reserves that back Ripple USD (RLUSD), acting as collateral trustee of those reserves for the benefit of RLUSD holders, and providing fiduciary digital asset custody services. Garlinghouse says the bank will also provide digital asset custody to enterprises beyond Ripple’s own stablecoin business.
Ripple says the bank will not issue RLUSD. The coin “will continue to be issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company”, Ripple’s limited purpose trust company regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services. Ripple describes the new bank as adding “federal OCC supervision” on top of that state licence.
RLUSD launched in December 2024 and now has a market capitalisation of $2.5 billion, Ripple says. BNY is its primary reserve custodian, the reserves are held in US dollar deposits, US government securities and other cash equivalents, and Ripple publishes monthly third-party attestations. The coin is already used as collateral within Ripple Prime, and Standard Chartered holds it for institutional clients through its Dubai branch.
“For years, we’ve said crypto and banks work better together. Final approval for Ripple National Trust Bank is what that looks like in practice,” Garlinghouse said in the release. “A national trust charter gives us an even stronger foundation for RLUSD and the institutional products we’re building across payments, custody and capital markets.”
The conditions set in December
The OCC’s conditional approval letter, dated 12 December 2025, shows what any final approval would rest on. It granted “preliminary conditional approval only” and said final approval to begin business would not come “until all preopening requirements are met”.
The letter describes a New York bank that will provide services to Standard Custody & Trust, managing the reserve “on a directed basis” and acting as collateral trustee “on a fiduciary basis”, plus crypto custody for affiliates and unaffiliated institutional customers. The letter says it will not be an insured depository institution.
The conditions are specific. The bank must hold at least $11.7 million in tier 1 capital, with at least half of it, or $5.85 million, whichever is greater, in eligible liquid assets. It must also keep 180 days of operating expenses in such assets, and it needs the OCC’s written non-objection before any significant change to its business plan during its first three years. The letter also gave Ripple 12 months to raise the capital and 18 months to open, or the approval would lapse.
A federal wrapper around a state-issued coin
The structure matters more than the headline. Ripple is not moving RLUSD into a federal bank; it is putting the reserves and the custody of those reserves under a federally supervised trustee while issuance stays in New York. In its December letter the OCC itself pushed back on commenters who assumed otherwise, calling some of their concerns “premised on unfounded assumptions or inaccurate conclusions (e.g., that the Bank would be a stablecoin issuer)”.
That split will be tested next year. The OCC has finalised its GENIUS Act rule for stablecoin issuers and custody at OCC-supervised firms, and both the rule and the Act take effect on 18 January 2027. Ripple says it will keep working with the OCC and NYDFS “as the U.S. implements the regulatory framework established by the GENIUS Act”, but it has not said whether RLUSD’s issuer will change its licensing under that law.
Why the source matters here
Ripple is the only party so far to describe the final step. Its release says the OCC announced the approval, yet when TSN checked on 27 October the OCC had not published a news release, decision letter or post on it. Its corporate applications record for the charter still listed only the application’s receipt on 2 July 2025 and its approval on 12 December 2025, the conditional step. That may simply be a lag in publication. The OCC announced the December decision in a news release and has published at least one final approval this year, for HSBC’s New York federal branch in June, as a formal decision. Until the OCC’s own record appears, details such as the opening date and any new conditions are unknown.
Ripple is also not the only crypto firm going down this road. Coinbase won conditional approval for its own national trust company in April, and the OCC’s December letter noted that the agency already has “years of experience successfully supervising a crypto-native national trust bank”.
Sources
- Ripple: Ripple Receives Final OCC Approval to Establish National Trust Bank, 26 October 2026
- Brad Garlinghouse on X, 26 October 2026
- OCC: Conditional approval letter to Ripple Labs on Ripple National Trust Bank, 12 December 2025
- OCC: News release 2025-125 on five conditional trust bank approvals, 12 December 2025
- OCC Corporate Applications Search: 2025-Charter-342347
Related stories
- OCC Finalises GENIUS Act Rule for Stablecoin Issuers, With AML Rules to Come
- Coinbase Gets Conditional US Approval for Trust Charter: The Crypto-to-Banking Pipeline Just Opened
- Standard Chartered Now Holds Ripple’s RLUSD Stablecoin for Institutions, and Plans to Let It Be Used as Collateral at LMAX
Follow @tsnmediahub on X for breaking AI news as it happens.
Follow on X
