Ripple, Circle and others receive conditional clearance to operate as trust banks

The conditional charters allow Ripple and Circle to set up new federally supervised trust banks, while BitGo, Paxos and Fidelity Digital Assets have been cleared to convert their existing state trust charters into national ones, pending final approval. Once fully authorized, the firms will be able to custody assets and handle certain payment and settlement functions across state lines under direct OCC oversight, but they will not be allowed to take deposits or make loans or offer FDIC-insured accounts.

Under the decisions, Circle plans to operate through First National Digital Currency Bank, while Ripple will use a new entity called Ripple National Trust Bank. BitGo Bank & Trust, Paxos Trust Company and Fidelity Digital Assets have been given the green light to pursue conversion from state-regulated trusts into national trust banks, a status normally reserved for traditional custodians. Each firm must still complete capital, governance and risk-management milestones before receiving a final charter and opening as a national trust bank.

National trust bank charters bring federal supervision but are narrower than full commercial bank licences. They permit firms to safeguard client assets, manage stablecoin reserves and provide certain payment services under a single federal regulator, but they do not authorize deposit-taking, lending or access to federal deposit insurance. Anchorage Digital remains the only crypto firm currently operating with a fully granted national trust bank charter.

The five firms play a central role in the stablecoin and institutional custody market. Circle issues USDC, one of the largest dollar-pegged tokens; Ripple is behind RLUSD and the XRP-based payments network; Paxos issues USDS and manages reserves for other branded stablecoins; BitGo is a major institutional digital-asset custodian; and Fidelity Digital Assets provides crypto custody and services for institutional investors and is preparing its own stablecoin. Together they are connected to stablecoins including USDC, RLUSD, USDS and PYUSD, in a market that has grown to roughly $313 billion in total value this year.

For these issuers and custodians, national trust charters would move large portions of their activity under federal bank-like oversight, replacing a patchwork of state licences with a single regulatory regime. Circle and Ripple have both sought a federal charter for years as part of efforts to position their stablecoins and custody services as fully within the U.S. regulatory perimeter.