Stablecoin platform Bridge wins conditional approval for national trust bank charter

Stablecoin platform Bridge has received a conditional banking charter from the United States Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Summary

• Bridge has received conditional approval from the OCC to operate as a national trust bank.
• The Stripe-owned platform would be able to issue, custody, and manage stablecoins nationwide once fully approved. 

“Once fully approved, the charter will enable Bridge to operate stablecoin products and services under direct federal oversight,” Bridge said in a Feb 17. announcement.

Bridge, which was founded by former Coinbase executives Zach Abrams and Sean Yu, operates as a stablecoin orchestration and financial infrastructure platform that allows businesses to move seamlessly between traditional fiat systems and blockchain networks. 

It was acquired by payments giant Stripe late last year, which embedded the company’s regulated digital dollar infrastructure directly into Stripe’s global payments stack.

Bridge had also applied for the national trust bank charter around the same time, as per the OCC’s records.

According to Bridge, its compliance framework is already compatible with the United States’ benchmark stablecoin legislation, the GENIUS Act, and receiving a national trust bank charter will provide its customers “the regulatory backbone they need to build with stablecoins confidently and at scale.”

Under the OCC’s oversight, Bridge will be able to offer stablecoin issuance, orchestration, reserve management, and custodial services across the U.S. without having to acquire separate state-level money transmitter licenses in each jurisdiction.

Bankers urge OCC to rethink crypto trust charters

Bridge is among a slew of crypto-facing entities that have recently received conditional approval for a national trust bank charter over the past months. Ripple and Circle, two of the crypto industry’s leading stablecoin issuers, received similar conditional approvals in December last year.

However, banking groups have criticized the OCC for moving too quickly in granting national trust bank charters to crypto firms. 

A letter from the American Bankers Association last week argued that key provisions under the GENIUS Act were still unclear for the newly approved entities. Bankers are concerned that stablecoin companies could use national trust charters to circumvent oversight.

The ABA has also lobbied against yield-generating returns on crypto-linked products.