Ripple gets final OCC approval for its national trust bank, which will hold RLUSD reserves but take no deposits and make no loans

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has given final approval to Ripple National Trust Bank, the federally supervised trust bank that will manage the reserves behind Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin. The news came late on Monday 26 October in a Ripple press release dated from San Francisco, which opens by saying the OCC “today announced” the decision, ten months after the regulator’s conditional approval. We could not find that announcement on occ.gov by Tuesday morning, and the outlets that reported the story, including CoinDesk and The Block, cite Ripple’s release and Brad Garlinghouse’s post on X rather than an OCC document.

It is a narrow licence, with no deposit-taking and no lending. Ripple describes the bank’s work as managing the segregated reserves that back RLUSD and acting as collateral trustee of those reserves for RLUSD holders. Fiduciary custody of digital assets for companies comes later: the bank will be authorised to offer it once it opens.

Much is still missing from the public record. Ripple has not said when the bank opens, how much capital it holds or which conditions the OCC attached to the final approval. The release says only that Ripple will keep working with the OCC, New York’s financial regulator and other regulators “as RNTB begins operations”.

“For years, we’ve said crypto and banks work better together,” Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse said in the release. He added that the final approval “is what that looks like in practice”. Garlinghouse also posted the news on X late on Monday, US time.

What Ripple National Trust Bank will do with RLUSD

RLUSD itself does not move. The stablecoin, launched in December 2024, keeps being issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company (SCTC), a limited purpose trust company regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). The new national bank does not issue tokens.

What changes is the layer above the reserves. Ripple says RLUSD is backed by US dollar deposits, US government securities and other cash equivalents, with BNY as primary reserve custodian and monthly attestations by an independent third party covering supply and reserve assets. The trust bank will manage those segregated reserves and act as their collateral trustee on behalf of holders. Once the bank operates, a federally chartered fiduciary will sit between the reserves and the issuer, on top of the New York supervision SCTC already has.

One point is not settled by the release: whether BNY keeps custody of the reserves or whether part of that role moves to the new bank over time. Ripple’s text names BNY as primary custodian and the trust bank as manager and trustee, and says nothing more.

Ripple’s release of 26 October puts RLUSD’s market capitalisation at $2.5 billion, and CoinDesk gave the same figure on 27 October. On 12 December 2025, the day of the conditional approval, Ripple said the stablecoin had passed $1 billion in less than a year. Both numbers come from the issuer.

XRP, the token of the XRP Ledger where RLUSD also circulates, traded near $1.30 at 06:19 UTC on Tuesday, up 0.84% over 24 hours and down 0.27% over seven days. Nothing in that move points to the news. Our XRP coin page explains how the token and the ledger work.

What a national trust charter allows, and what it does not

A national trust bank is a bank in the legal sense, chartered and examined by the OCC, but limited to trust and fiduciary work. According to The Block, these charters “do not permit deposit-taking or lending”, which is what separates them from a commercial bank licence. There is no FDIC deposit insurance either, a gap that the community-bank lobby points to in its lawsuit against the OCC.

For a stablecoin issuer the appeal is supervision, not banking products. A federal trust charter puts reserve management and custody under a national supervisor. For RLUSD that supervisor is added to New York’s, not swapped for it, since the issuer stays with NYDFS. The charter also lines up with the GENIUS Act, the 2025 US stablecoin law whose rules are now being written. The OCC finished its part on 21 October, as we reported in our story on the OCC’s final GENIUS Act rule, which sets reserve, redemption and custody requirements for the issuers it supervises.

RLUSD holders do not become bank depositors. Ripple presents the bank as collateral trustee of the reserves for holders, and it has not published any change to RLUSD’s redemption terms tied to the charter.

From the July 2025 application to final approval

Ripple applied for the charter in July 2025, according to CoinDesk and The Block. On 12 December 2025 the OCC conditionally approved two new national trust banks, First National Digital Currency Bank (Circle’s) and Ripple National Trust Bank, and the conversion of three state trust companies into national ones: BitGo Bank & Trust, Fidelity Digital Assets and Paxos Trust Company. “Subject to meeting the OCC’s conditions,” the regulator wrote, they would join about 60 national trust banks it already supervised. The conditions were not listed.

“New entrants into the federal banking sector are good for consumers, the banking industry and the economy,” Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould said in that December release.

Circle crossed the line first. On 10 July 2026 the OCC granted final approval for First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A., law firm Davis Wright Tremaine wrote in August, which brings the management of USDC reserves under federal supervision. Ripple follows three and a half months later.

Bridge’s conditional approval was reported on 17 February 2026 and Crypto.com announced its own on 23 February, according to a wire story carried by Kitco and to Decrypt; The Block reported Coinbase’s on 2 April. Cointelegraph said on 27 October that all three were still at the conditional stage. Ramp’s application is covered in our story on the corporate card company’s charter request. Before any of them, Anchorage Digital was the main crypto firm operating under a national trust charter. For BitGo, Fidelity and Paxos, Davis Wright Tremaine wrote in August that final approval was still pending, and we found no later report of one.

Community banks are suing over this kind of charter

The approval lands while the charters themselves are in court. The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) sued the OCC on Friday 2 October in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Cointelegraph reported the next day. Rebeca Romero Rainey, the ICBA’s chief executive, said the OCC’s approach “exceeds the authority Congress granted the agency”.

Congress did not create the national trust charter as “a side door into the banking system for crypto firms”, she added. The ICBA says these banks escape Community Reinvestment Act duties, consolidated supervision, bank capital and liquidity standards and FDIC insurance. Cointelegraph’s report named no individual crypto firm as a target, and we have not seen the complaint itself, so whether a ruling could reach Ripple’s charter is an open question. No court decision has been reported, and the OCC had not answered Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

Politics adds a second front. Senator Elizabeth Warren has accused the OCC of breaking the National Bank Act with these approvals, according to The Block, while the Digital Chamber, a crypto industry group, replied that trust charters are limited to fiduciary work and that the firms chose federal supervision.

The same regulator is now courting the banks that are suing it: on 26 October the OCC invited community banks to issue stablecoins of their own, as set out in our report on the OCC’s offer and the ICBA suit.

Ripple Treasury’s 24/7 Returns: no rate and no named provider

The same evening Ripple put out a second, separate release, dated from New York, for its corporate cash management business. Ripple Treasury, which Ripple says it unveiled at Swell 2026, now offers a feature called 24/7 Returns. Eligible corporate customers can earn returns on operating cash that would otherwise sit idle overnight, at weekends and on holidays, through qualifying digital assets held in a Ripple wallet, RLUSD among them, “subject to meeting program requirements”. Ripple announced a $1 billion purchase of the treasury software firm GTreasury in October 2025, Bitcoin.com recalled.

The release gives no rate, does not define those requirements and does not say who generates the return or from what assets. That matters for risk, since a return on a stablecoin has to come from somewhere. Nor does it mention Ripple National Trust Bank, and the charter release does not mention 24/7 Returns, so nothing Ripple has published ties the feature to the new bank, which under its charter takes no deposits anyway.

Ripple lists American Airlines, Trax, Christian Louboutin, Subway, Adecco and Kingfisher among the businesses using Ripple Treasury, without saying which, if any, use the new feature. “Our partnership with Ripple Treasury is just getting started and already returning value,” said Blake Tablak, chief executive of Trax. The release also cites the 2026 AFP Liquidity Survey: 46% of organisations had raised their US cash balances over the past year, and 86% of treasury professionals said they would pick real-time money market funds if those met their investment policies.

Swell week and the dates to watch

Swell 2026 runs in New York from 27 to 29 October; our Swell 2026 event page has the programme. Both releases went out on the evening before it opened.

For RLUSD holders the open points are practical. When does Ripple National Trust Bank open, and will the OCC publish its own notice or conditions? Does reserve custody stay with BNY? Will the first attestation after the opening show the trust bank in the chain of custody? And in Washington, a judge has yet to say whether the OCC can keep granting crypto firms these charters at all.