Person
U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, appointed by President Trump, heading the OCC and its oversight of national bank charters, including crypto firms.
OCC review of the nine largest national banks found policies that cut off some customers on subjective grounds instead of financial risk. The regulator announced no penalties and said only that it may consider policy changes, mezha.net reported from Reuters.
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OCC found debanking-linked policies at all nine of its largest national banks between 2020 and September 2025. No fines came with the report, but the CFPB announced its own investigation and the OCC is weighing further changes for the largest banks.
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Comptroller Jonathan Gould presented the OCC's debanking report in Lexington beside Senate candidate Andy Barr, weeks before election day. Gould suggested rules may follow. No penalty has been reported.
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Treasury fined Bank of America $1.2 billion over anti-money laundering and sanctions failures, the third-largest penalty in its history. The bank says it has invested billions in compliance. The case tests how far spending alone protects a large bank.
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American Express must pay a $350 million penalty after US regulators found its AML program let about $13 billion in suspicious activity go under-reported. One order is thin evidence of a sweep, but it shows bank-chartered card issuers what the OCC counts as under-resourcing.
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American Express's bank drew a $350 million OCC fine for anti-money-laundering failures as the Fed ordered its parent companies to fix controls company-wide. That repair work is the part of the bill Amex has not yet put a figure on.
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Rain applied for an OCC trust bank that would issue stablecoins and hold their reserves, three days after community bankers sued to block such charters. If the bankers win, the payments firm's application could sit waiting on the case.
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ICBA's lawsuit challenges the OCC's authority behind 21 national trust bank charters cleared in Trump's second term, 13 of them for crypto companies. With Chevron gone, judges will read the 1978 statute for themselves in a case expected to run for years.
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Community bankers sued the OCC, arguing it lacks National Bank Act authority for trust charters approved for 21 firms, at least 13 of them crypto companies. The charters matter most to stablecoin issuers seeking room above the $10 billion cap on state-qualified issuers.
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House Democrats led by Maxine Waters asked the FDIC and OCC for at least 120 days to review a 400-plus-page Community Reinvestment Act rewrite. For banks, how long the rule lasts matters more, since the OCC's last solo rewrite was rescinded by the next administration.
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The OCC has conditionally approved Bastion Platforms National Trust Company to issue, custody and convert stablecoins on behalf of clients, a fee business housed inside a charter that bars deposits and FDIC cover.
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Cornerstone Community Bank had to raise $20 million before it could make a loan, and it took more than 230 shareholders and about $27 million to get there. Lawmakers are now weighing that floor.
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The FDIC's Thursday proposal sets standard review clocks of 90 or 180 days under a 270-day cap, and rewrites its concentration test to count credit union and thrift deposits. Comment runs 60 days.
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The Kansas City Fed counts fewer than seven de novo banks a year since 2010 against 185 a year before 2007, and its researchers put most of the fall down to technological change. Applications are rising anyway.
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The proposed Builders Bank and Trust would take no deposits and make no loans, which leaves custody fees as its only revenue line, and the applicant queue it joins suggests approval is measured in years rather than quarters.
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Builders Bank & Trust would custody bitcoin and stablecoins under one federal supervisor instead of fifty state ones. That is worth paying for. But 23 of the OCC's last 40 applications want much the same thing.
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The regulator cleared the core bank and moved leveraged FX, forwards, merchant acquiring and correspondent banking into a separate queue, each needing its own sign-off before Revolut can sell it in the States. No other charter it granted this year works that way.
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The OCC's conditional approval puts World Liberty Financial in a charter pipeline with Circle, Coinbase and Nu Holdings. Anyone pricing that pipeline is now pricing a political process.
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A conditional national trust charter would let the Trump-linked issuer combine minting, custody and reserve management under one federal supervisor. Ripple and Circle are ahead of it in the queue.
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