Ripple receives final OCC approval for national trust bank
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The Facts
- The OCC granted final approval for Ripple National Trust Bank.
- Ripple National Trust Bank previously received conditional OCC approval in December 2025.
- Ripple National Trust Bank will operate under federal supervision.
- Ripple National Trust Bank is authorized to manage reserves backing the RLUSD stablecoin.
- Ripple National Trust Bank may serve as collateral trustee for RLUSD reserve assets benefiting token holders.
- Ripple National Trust Bank is authorized to provide fiduciary digital-asset custody services.
- RLUSD will continue to be issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company.
- The trust-bank charter does not authorize retail deposit accounts or lending services.
Context
What is Ripple National Trust Bank authorized to do?
It may manage segregated reserves backing RLUSD, act as collateral trustee for those reserves for RLUSD holders and provide fiduciary digital-asset custody services. Cointelegraph FinanceFeeds Eagle-Tribune
Does the approval make Ripple a conventional retail bank?
No. The charter does not authorize retail deposit accounts or lending services; it covers specialized trust-bank activities. FinanceFeeds Cryptopolitan
Who will issue the RLUSD stablecoin?
RLUSD will continue to be issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company, Ripple's New York-regulated limited-purpose trust company. Cointelegraph Cryptopolitan
Where Left and Right agree
Left and right largely agree on this one.
- What both sides accept
- Both frame the charter's narrow scope — no retail deposits, no lending — as the feature that keeps this arrangement safe, not a footnote to the approval.
- Where Left and Right differ in emphasis
- Whether the safeguard here is the OCC's ongoing duty to actively examine custody and reserves, or the charter's built-in structural restraint itself.
How left and right read it
A charter is a supervisory obligation, not a seal of approval, and the burden sits with the OCC to prove it can police what it just licensed. It holds no retail deposits and makes no loans. Federal supervision has to mean examining custody and reserves closely, not blessing the business.
Sound money infrastructure should answer to federal supervision rather than operate in a gray zone, and that is exactly what this charter delivers: reserve management and fiduciary custody now sit inside a bank structure accountable to the OCC. The charter's refusal to authorize retail deposits or lending matters just as much. That restraint is the real safeguard here, not an afterthought.
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