Crypto

Ripple Wins Final OCC Approval for National Trust Bank to Hold RLUSD Reserves and Offer Custody

The OCC granted final approval for Ripple National Trust Bank, which will manage RLUSD stablecoin reserves and offer digital asset custody, as banking groups contest crypto charters in court.

Oct 27, 2026 - 07:15

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Ripple has received final approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish Ripple National Trust Bank (RNTB), a federally supervised national trust bank, the company announced on Monday, October 26, 2026. The decision completes a chartering process that began with conditional approval from the OCC in December 2025.

The approval gives the San Francisco-based blockchain company a federal regulator for key parts of the infrastructure behind its dollar-backed stablecoin, Ripple USD (RLUSD), at a time when national trust charters for crypto firms are being challenged by lawmakers and banking groups.

What the trust bank is authorized to do

According to Ripple's announcement, RNTB's approved activities include:

Managing the segregated reserves that support RLUSD
Acting as collateral trustee of those reserves for the benefit of RLUSD holders
Providing fiduciary digital asset custody services

RLUSD will continue to be issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company, Ripple's limited purpose trust company regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). Ripple said the new bank adds OCC supervision to the regulatory structure supporting the stablecoin, meaning parts of the RLUSD arrangement will now sit under both state and federal oversight, as Decrypt noted.

Ripple said the bank's approved business plan extends beyond RLUSD. Once it opens, RNTB will be authorized to offer fiduciary custody to enterprises that are integrating digital assets into payments, trading and treasury operations.

"For years, we've said crypto and banks work better together. Final approval for Ripple National Trust Bank is what that looks like in practice," Ripple Chief Executive Brad Garlinghouse said in the release. "We've spent over a decade building regulated financial infrastructure that institutions can actually use at scale. A national trust charter gives us an even stronger foundation for RLUSD and the institutional products we're building across payments, custody and capital markets."

RLUSD's growth

RLUSD launched in December 2024 and has grown to a market capitalization of $2.5 billion, Ripple said. Decrypt, citing market data, put the figure at about $2.6 billion. The stablecoin is used across Ripple's payments infrastructure and as collateral within its Ripple Prime brokerage. BNY serves as the primary reserve custodian, and Ripple publishes monthly independent third-party attestations of the token's circulating supply and reserve assets. According to the company, RLUSD is fully backed by U.S. dollar deposits, U.S. government securities and other cash equivalents.

Ripple first applied for the banking license in July 2025, CoinDesk reported. The OCC conditionally approved its application in December 2025 alongside those of Circle, Paxos, Fidelity Digital Assets and BitGo, according to Decrypt.

Charters face legal and political challenges

The OCC's trust charters for crypto companies remain contested. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, has argued in a letter to Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould that approvals for firms including Coinbase and Ripple violated the National Bank Act, Decrypt reported. "These companies are effectively crypto banks that want to evade the fundamental safeguards and obligations that come with being a bank," she wrote.

Earlier this month, the Independent Community Bankers of America sued the OCC in federal court, arguing that the charters have become "a side door into the banking system for crypto firms" that avoid the capital requirements, consolidated supervision and FDIC insurance that apply to traditional banks, according to the same report. The Digital Chamber, a crypto industry trade group, has urged the OCC to "defend these charter approvals and continue developing clear supervisory expectations for trust banks."

Ripple said it will continue to work with the OCC, NYDFS and other regulators as RNTB begins operations and as the United States implements the stablecoin framework established by the GENIUS Act.

Market reaction

XRP, the digital asset closely associated with Ripple, rose 1.4% on Tuesday after the approval, making it an outlier in a generally weaker crypto market, Investing.com reported. Bitcoin fell 0.5% to about $80,000 by 6:46 a.m. ET, slipping below the $80,000-to-$87,000 range it had held over the past month, while ether eased 0.2% to $2,324.01. Investing.com attributed the softer tone partly to caution ahead of the Federal Reserve's policy decision on Wednesday and to a pause in purchases by Strategy, the largest corporate bitcoin holder, which reported no bitcoin buys during the week of October 19 to 25 and holds about 848,517 coins.