Circle wins final OCC approval for national trust bank expansion

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Circle wins OCC approval

Highlights

Circle receives final OCC approval for First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A., launching as Circle National Trust with direct federal oversight focused on digital asset custody.
The initial business plan excludes USDC Reserve management at launch but may expand to offer institutional custody to select banks and financial institutions based on demand.
Circle's approval follows a wave of crypto-related bank charter filings since June 2025 and comes as CRCL shares close at approximately $63 on Thursday.

Charter scope and launch plan

According to The Block, the company said Friday that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has granted final approval for First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A., which will operate as Circle National Trust under direct federal oversight.

At launch, the bank will provide fiduciary digital asset custody services to Circle and affiliated entities. Its OCC-approved business plan also allows for possible expansion, and the firm says it may later offer custody to a limited number of institutional clients, mainly banks and other financial institutions, depending on demand.

Circle originally applied to the OCC on June 30, 2025, with plans for the bank to oversee management of the USDC Reserve under federal supervision. That function is no longer part of the initial rollout, and the company now treats reserve management as a future capability rather than a launch activity.

Jeremy Allaire, Circle's co-founder, chairman and chief executive, says federal oversight of the trust bank sets a new benchmark for transparency, governance and scale. The charter does not allow the bank to accept cash deposits or make loans, but it does permit the firm to hold customer assets.

Broader crypto banking competition

Under the terms of Circle's conditional approval in December 2025, USDC issuance is set to move to a New York limited-purpose trust company rather than the national trust bank. That same approval cycle also included Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets and Paxos.

Circle's June 2025 filing helped trigger a broader rush by crypto and financial services groups seeking similar charters. Ripple applied two days later, followed by Paxos in August, Coinbase in October and Crypto.com weeks after that, while the list expands through 2026 to include World Liberty Financial, Laser Digital, Payoneer, Morgan Stanley, Zerohash, Charles Schwab and EDX.

Some applicants have already advanced, with Crypto.com and Coinbase securing conditional approvals and Stripe-owned Bridge winning one in February. Sony Bank also clears the conditional stage this week for Connectia Trust, a subsidiary planning to issue a dollar-backed stablecoin.

Circle, which became the first company to receive a BitLicense from the New York Department of Financial Services in 2015, also holds licenses in the UK, Singapore and Bermuda. The OCC's trust charter approach continues to draw political scrutiny, with Senator Elizabeth Warren arguing that some companies receiving national trust charters do not qualify under the National Bank Act.

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

Our earlier article on the UK designating major cloud providers as “critical third parties” explained how Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Oracle would come under direct financial regulatory oversight from July 13. We noted that regulators see systemic risk in the financial sector’s growing reliance on cloud infrastructure, where a disruption at a leading provider could affect multiple firms at once and threaten broader stability.

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