Stablecoin firm Circle wins final OCC approval to open national trust bank

Circle (CRCL) has received final approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A., the company said Friday.

The bank will operate under the name Circle National Trust and will be subject to direct federal oversight by the OCC, the primary regulator for national banks and national trust banks.

Custody first, reserves later

Upon opening, Circle National Trust will offer fiduciary digital asset custody services to Circle and its affiliates.

Its OCC-approved business plan leaves room to expand that. Depending on demand, the bank may eventually extend custody directly to a limited number of institutional customers, focusing on banks and other financial institutions.

Circle initially applied to the OCC on June 30, 2025, with plans to oversee management of the USDC Reserve under federal supervision. However, management of the USDC Reserve is now planned as a future capability rather than something the bank will do at launch.

"Federal oversight of our trust bank sets a new standard for transparency, governance, and scale," said Jeremy Allaire, co-founder, chairman, and chief executive of Circle.

A year in the queue

Conditional approval landed in December 2025, alongside Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos.

The charter does not permit Circle to accept cash deposits or make loans, but it permits the firm to hold customer assets.

USDC issuance is set to transfer to a New York limited-purpose trust company, not to the national trust bank, under the terms of that conditional approval.

Circle became the first company to receive a BitLicense from the New York Department of Financial Services in 2015, and holds licenses in the UK, Singapore, and Bermuda.

The charter queue

Circle's June 2025 filing opened a wave of interest from crypto service providers.

Ripple applied two days later, Paxos in August, Coinbase in October, and Crypto.com weeks after that. The queue widened through 2026 to include Trump-backed World Liberty Financial, Nomura-backed Laser Digital, Payoneer, Morgan Stanley, Zerohash, Charles Schwab, and Citadel-backed EDX, Kraken parent Payward, and Catena Labs.

Crypto.com and Coinbase have since won conditional approvals of their own. Stripe-owned Bridge secured one in February. Sony Bank cleared the conditional stage this week for a trust subsidiary, Connectia Trust, which plans to issue a dollar-backed stablecoin.

BitGo received full OCC approval in December. Anchorage Digital Bank had been the only crypto firm holding a national trust charter, granted in 2021.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has pushed back on the OCC's decision to grant national trust charters to companies she said do not qualify under the National Bank Act.

CRCL shares closed at roughly $63 on Thursday, according to The Block's crypto equities page.