The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued its GENIUS Act final rule on October 21, and the Federal Register printed all 195 pages two days later. It sets capital, reserve and redemption standards for every stablecoin issuer the OCC will supervise, and it takes effect with the Act on January 18, 2027. The OCC has not said when it will accept applications, and from that January date an issuer needs one on file to keep issuing.
What the GENIUS Act final rule settles
The final text is looser than the March proposal where issuers pushed hardest. The proposal presumed that payments to holders by affiliates and related third parties broke the ban on yield. The final rule drops that presumption and says the OCC will apply the statute to the facts of each arrangement, so rewards paid by an exchange or distribution partner will be judged case by case.
Reserves moved the same way. The proposal’s safe harbour asked for 30% of reserves in demand deposits and a weighted average maturity of no more than 20 days. The published rule requires at least 5% in demand deposits or Federal Reserve balances and caps exposure to any one counterparty at 40%, with US government debt, qualifying custodians and cleared repo outside the cap.
A new issuer must hold the greater of $5 million or the amount in its licensing conditions for 36 months. Every issuer must also keep an operational backstop equal to 12 months of expenses, up to half of it funded with long-dated subordinated debt. Redemptions must be paid within two business days, and an issuer has 24 hours to tell the OCC if requests exceed 10% of a coin’s outstanding value.
The rule also writes down the $10 billion handover GL Insight covered this month. A state issuer that crosses the line must notify the OCC within five days and either move to federal supervision within 360 days or stop net issuance.
The application window is shorter than it looks
The OCC’s companion bulletin explains why the missing date matters. From January 18, issuing a payment stablecoin in the US without approval carries criminal penalties. An existing issuer can ask for a waiver of up to 12 months, but only with a substantially complete application pending. The queue opens once the Office of Management and Budget approves the application forms, and the OCC’s GENIUS Act page still says it is not accepting filings.
That leaves little slack. The OCC takes up to 30 days to say whether a filing is substantially complete, and another 30 to review missing pieces. An issuer that files in late November and gets one round of questions could reach January 18 without knowing whether it qualifies for a waiver. The bulletin adds that the OCC sees no general case for waiving anything beyond the approval requirement, because issuers have had 18 months to prepare. Firms not yet issuing in the US should expect to wait for approval before launching.
Anti-money laundering rules are still missing
Bank Secrecy Act and sanctions requirements are excluded. They sit in a separate OCC proposal from June 24, written with FinCEN and OFAC. The bulletin still lists BSA, AML and OFAC controls among the sections every application must cover, so applicants will describe sanctions programmes against standards that are not final.
Firms already known to the OCC start ahead. Five crypto firms, including Circle, Ripple and Paxos, won conditional trust charters last December, and the agency held 40 charter applications by August. A new entrant will learn the OCC’s expectations during its busiest filing period.
The OCC’s cost analysis shows who it expects to regulate. It assumes 12 non-bank and 10 bank-affiliated issuers, with $272.3 billion of stablecoins entering its supervision in 2027, $222.3 billion of it non-bank. It puts the $5 million floor at $110 million of equity industry-wide, against $5.5 billion had it required capital of 2% of issuance.
Bottom line
The OCC has written the standards, and they are more forgiving on reserves and yield than the March proposal, but issuers that want to keep minting after January 18 still need a substantially complete application in a window that has not opened, judged partly against an anti-money laundering rule that is still a proposal. More stablecoin coverage sits on the GL Insight hub.
Watch for:
- The OCC press release that opens applications and waiver requests
- The final BSA, AML and sanctions rule from the OCC and Treasury
- How many existing issuers request waivers, and whether any is refused