The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency published a notice of proposed rulemaking on February 25, 2026, marking the first concrete regulatory implementation of the GENIUS Act, the federal stablecoin law signed by President Trump on July 18, 2025. The proposed rules establish the framework under which nationally chartered banks and OCC-licensed entities may issue payment stablecoins, covering application requirements, permissible activities, reserve composition, redemption obligations, and capital adequacy standards.
The GENIUS Act itself passed the Senate on June 17, 2025 with a bipartisan 68-30 vote and the House the following month, creating the first comprehensive federal regulatory regime for payment stablecoins in the United States. The statute prohibits any entity other than a permitted payment stablecoin issuer from issuing payment stablecoins domestically and requires issuers to maintain reserves backing outstanding stablecoins on at least a one-to-one basis using specified permissible assets.
Under the OCC's proposed rules, permissible reserve assets would include US currency, demand deposits at insured depository institutions, Treasury securities with remaining maturities of 93 days or less, qualifying reverse repurchase agreements, eligible money market fund shares, and tokenized versions of certain qualifying reserves. The rules would also establish prohibitions on paying interest or yield on stablecoins, a provision that drew attention during the legislative process given its implications for the competitive positioning of stablecoins relative to bank deposits and money market instruments.
State-qualified payment stablecoin issuers with more than ten billion dollars in outstanding issuance would face a consequential choice under the statute. They must transition to federal supervision within 360 days or cease net new issuance. This threshold provision is expected to funnel the largest stablecoin issuers into federal oversight regardless of their current state licensing arrangements, reshaping the regulatory landscape for incumbents such as Circle and any future large-scale issuers.
The OCC is not working in isolation. The FDIC has separately approved a proposed rule establishing application procedures for FDIC-supervised institutions seeking to issue payment stablecoins through subsidiaries, while the National Credit Union Administration has submitted its own GENIUS Act rulemaking to the Office of Management and Budget for review. The Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury are expected to issue additional proposed regulations in the coming months.
The statutory timeline creates urgency across all these agencies. Implementing regulations must be issued by July 18, 2026, one year from the Act's enactment. The GENIUS Act takes effect on the earlier of eighteen months from enactment, which would be January 18, 2027, or 120 days after primary federal regulators issue their final implementing rules. If agencies finalize rules quickly, the effective date could arrive sooner than the January 2027 backstop.
Comments on the OCC's proposed rules are due by May 1, 2026. The rulemaking will determine the practical requirements that banks and licensed entities must meet to participate in the stablecoin market, setting capital, reserve, and operational standards that will define the competitive landscape for the first generation of federally regulated payment stablecoins in the United States.