At a glance

  • The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the federal regulator of national banks, issued its final rule for payment stablecoin issuers under the GENIUS Act on Wednesday, according to its news release. The rule and the Act take effect on 18 Jan 2027.
  • The final text drops a proposed presumption that certain payments by affiliates and related third parties break the Act’s ban on paying holders yield. The OCC says it keeps its power to act against evasion.

The rule sets standards for reserve assets, redemption, risk management, audits and reporting, custody, licensing and a capital and operational backstop, OCC Bulletin 2026-50 says. Most of it sits in a new part 15 of title 12 of the Code of Federal Regulations, the volume that holds US banking rules.

It covers national banks, federal savings associations, federal branches and their subsidiaries, plus non-bank firms approved as federal qualified issuers, foreign issuers, and state issuers that fall under the OCC’s authority. Rules on anti-money laundering and sanctions are left to a separate rulemaking with the Treasury.

“Today’s final rule advances President Trump and Secretary Bessent’s vision for American leadership in digital assets,” Comptroller Jonathan Gould said in the release. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent compared the Act to the National Currency Act of 1863.

What changed on yield

The GENIUS Act bars an issuer from paying holders interest or yield “solely in connection with the holding, use, or retention” of a payment stablecoin. In its proposal, the OCC added a rebuttable presumption: certain deals with affiliates and related third parties would be treated as breaking the ban unless the issuer proved otherwise.

That presumption is gone. The final rule text says that “after reviewing the comments, the OCC has determined to eliminate the rebuttable presumption from the final rule.”

That is not a safe harbour. The OCC “retains its authority to address evasion” of the yield ban, the text says, and it will apply the statute to “the facts and circumstances of any particular arrangement” rather than publish lists of permitted and banned deals.

It also declines to presume that rewards programmes running before the Act was signed are lawful. Those programmes will be judged like any other, and the rule offers no de minimis exemption for small payments and no cure period for breaches.

What commenters said

The rule’s own summary shows a split. Many commenters wanted a strong ban that would catch issuers paying yield through a third party, and some asked for the presumption to be widened or replaced with outright prohibitions.

Many others wanted a narrow ban and the presumption removed or cut back. They argued it could catch payments to related parties that were not made solely for holding a stablecoin. The OCC sided with the second group on the presumption, not on a safe harbour.

On redemption, many commenters opposed letting issuers freeze or extend redemptions when requests spike, warning that this could speed up a run. The final rule keeps the baseline that a timely redemption may not take more than two business days, and sets out when that clock starts.

Other changes

The OCC says it gave issuers more flexibility in managing reserves while keeping liquidity, diversification and concentration requirements. It defines a “tokenized form” of a reserve asset as one recorded on a distributed ledger that confers the same legal rights as the conventional asset.

The capital elements were simplified relative to the proposal, the rule says. Revised weekly and quarterly reporting forms, out for a further 30-day comment period, would start with the 25 Jan 2027 weekly and 31 Mar 2027 quarterly report dates, Bulletin 2026-52 says, subject to approval by the Office of Management and Budget.

The OCC proposed the rule on 2 Mar 2026 and kept taking late comments until 1 Jul. It has been at the centre of crypto banking fights before; see the community banks’ lawsuit against the OCC and Rain’s trust bank application. For the basics, see what a dollar stablecoin is.

What happens next

The OCC will announce in a separate release when it starts accepting applications and waiver requests from would-be issuers. The anti-money-laundering and sanctions rule is still to come, and the reporting forms open for comment once they appear in the Federal Register.

The fixed date is 18 Jan 2027, when the Act and the rule take effect.

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