Rain applies to OCC for national trust bank charter

At a glance

Rain, a stablecoin card and payments infrastructure company, has applied to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish Rain National Trust Bank, headquartered in New York.
If approved, the uninsured trust bank would offer custody, reserve management for permitted stablecoin issuers and issuance of US dollar stablecoins to institutional clients; the application faces OCC review and a public comment period.

Rain has filed an application with the OCC for a national trust bank charter, the company said in a statement on Monday.

The proposed bank would have three lines of business, according to Rain: fiduciary custody of digital assets and dollars, holding and administering reserves for permitted stablecoin issuers under the GENIUS Act, and issuing and redeeming dollar-backed stablecoins as issuer of record.

It would not accept deposits, make commercial loans or offer consumer accounts, the company said. A trust bank of this kind holds client assets for identified owners rather than taking them onto its own balance sheet, which is why it would not be covered by FDIC insurance. Rain said reserves backing any stablecoin it issues would not be pledged, lent or reused.

Brandon Soto, most recently chief financial officer of Coastal Financial Corporation and earlier CFO of Square Financial Services, Block’s Utah-chartered industrial bank, is the proposed president and chief executive, subject to OCC review.

“The institutions building on Rain want the assets behind their programs held by a fiduciary that answers to a federal regulator,” Farooq Malik, Rain’s chief executive and co-founder, said in the statement.

Where the assets sit before a national trust bank

Rain’s partners run stablecoin card, wallet and money-movement programmes. The company said the assets behind those programmes currently sit across state licences, third-party custodians and third-party stablecoin issuers. The trust bank would be a separately capitalised subsidiary; Rain itself would remain a payments platform and a Visa and Mastercard principal member.

What it changes for users: nothing yet. Rain said its card and wallet programmes continue as they operate today, and described the charter as a multi-year initiative.

What happens next

The OCC’s review includes a public comment period, and the public portion of the application is due to appear on occ.gov in the coming days. The bank can only begin operating after it receives all required approvals.

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