Overview
On February 25, 2026, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced that it would issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking related to payment stablecoins. The proposed regulations (Proposed Rules) would implement the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, which was signed into law in July of 2025. The OCC's Proposed Rules come after the National Credit Union Administration proposed its own implementing regulations.
The GENIUS Act establishes a regulatory framework for payment stablecoin activities and grants the OCC regulatory authority over certain permitted payment stablecoin issuers, including depository institutions already subject to the OCC's regulatory authority. The OCC's Proposed Rules address the vast majority of the regulations it is required to promulgate under the GENIUS Act. However, it does not address any regulations related to the Bank Secrecy Act, anti-money laundering, or Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions, which will be addressed in a future joint rulemaking with the Department of the Treasury.
The Proposed Rules would establish a new 12 CFR part 15, which establishes regulations governing, among other areas:
- activities, and prohibited activities, of permitted payment stablecoin issuers and state qualified payment stablecoin issuers;
- reserve asset requirements;
- redemption requirements;
- risk management principles-based requirements and standards;
- audits, reports, and supervision;
- transition standards for state qualified payment stablecoin issuers to federal oversight;
- OCC enforcement authority over nonbank state qualified payment stablecoin issuers during unusual and exigent circumstances;
- custodial or safekeeping services requirements;
- applications and registrations for OCC-regulated permitted payment stablecoin issuers;
- examination and supervision of foreign payment stablecoin issuers;
- minimum capital requirements for permitted payment stablecoin issuers, including proposed adjustments to the Bank Capital Rule under 12 CFR part 3.
The Proposed Rules also explicitly address the possibility that issuers might evade the GENIUS Act's prohibition on the payment of interest or yield to payment stablecoin holders through arrangements with third parties. The OCC noted that it would be impossible to identify all, or most, third-party arrangements meant to side-step the GENIUS Act's yield prohibition, but that generally prohibiting the payment of yield could create uncertainty in the market. As such, the Proposed Rules would include a presumption that an issuer is paying impermissible yield if:
- the issuer has an arrangement with an affiliate or related third party to pay interest or yield to the affiliate or related third party; and
- the affiliate or related third party has an arrangement to pay interest or yield to a holder of any payment stablecoin issued by the issuer solely in connection with the holding, use, or retention of such payment stablecoin.
While there may be other arrangements designed to sidestep the GENIUS Act's prohibition on yield that are not covered by the presumption, the OCC intends to handle those on a case-by-case basis and does not consider it necessary to include them in the proposed rebuttable presumption.
The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking includes 211 specific questions covering almost every aspect of the Proposed Rule, including definitions, as well as generally requesting comment on the Proposed Rule. Comments on the Proposed Rules must be received within 60 days of their publication in the Federal Register. The effective date of the GENIUS Act depends on the date on which the primary Federal payment stablecoin regulators, including the OCC, issue final regulations implementing the GENIUS Act. For more information about the requirements of the GENIUS Act, read Steptoe's article here.
