Ripple has received final approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish Ripple National Trust Bank, completing a charter process that began with conditional approval in December 2025. According to Ripple’s official announcement, RNTB will operate as a federally supervised national trust bank focused on RLUSD reserve management and fiduciary digital-asset custody, rather than as a conventional deposit-taking commercial bank.
The October 26 approval authorizes RNTB to manage the segregated reserves supporting Ripple USD, act as collateral trustee for the benefit of RLUSD holders and provide fiduciary digital-asset custody services once operations begin. RLUSD itself will continue to be issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company, Ripple’s New York Department of Financial Services-regulated limited purpose trust company, preserving a state-regulated issuer alongside the new federally supervised reserve and custody infrastructure.
RLUSD Gains a Federal Trust-Bank Layer
Ripple says RLUSD has grown to approximately $2.5 billion in market capitalization since launching in December 2024. That amount represents stablecoins outstanding rather than deposits placed with RNTB, and BNY currently remains the primary reserve custodian while Ripple publishes monthly independent attestations covering circulating supply and reserve assets.
The final approval follows the OCC’s December 2025 conditional decision, which authorized the proposed bank to exercise fiduciary powers once all pre-opening requirements were satisfied. The charter limits RNTB to trust-company operations and related activities rather than conventional commercial banking, including fiduciary cryptocurrency custody and collateral-trustee services.
The structure extends Ripple’s broader push into regulated institutional custody, which has already included security and staking integrations for institutional clients. The national trust charter adds a federally supervised fiduciary entity to that infrastructure without turning Ripple into a full-service bank authorized to conduct conventional lending and deposit businesses.
RLUSD is also becoming more integrated into institutional trading and settlement workflows. Ripple Prime recently introduced 24/7 perpetual swaps tied to traditional financial markets, with RLUSD available as collateral within its brokerage framework. RNTB strengthens the regulated infrastructure surrounding those uses, but the charter itself does not demonstrate additional RLUSD transaction volume or institutional adoption.
Approval Arrives During a Wider Charter Debate
The approval comes as federal stablecoin rules become more prescriptive under the GENIUS Act. The OCC finalized core implementation rules in October, while the evolving framework is already reshaping competition between regulated stablecoin issuers. RNTB’s national trust charter is separate from authorization as a GENIUS Act payment-stablecoin issuer, and Ripple says it will continue working with both the OCC and NYDFS as the federal framework takes effect.
National trust charters for crypto companies remain contested. U.S. banking groups had already asked the OCC to slow crypto-linked charter approvals, while the Independent Community Bankers of America subsequently challenged the OCC’s chartering approach in court. The litigation contests the regulatory framework surrounding these charters rather than constituting a ruling invalidating Ripple’s approval.
For XRP, the development is institutional and regulatory rather than a protocol change. RNTB does not alter XRP Ledger consensus, XRP supply or the technical operation of XRP, while its approved activities center on RLUSD reserve infrastructure and enterprise digital-asset custody.
The confirmed milestone is therefore narrower than Ripple becoming a conventional national bank. Ripple now has final approval for a federally supervised trust bank that can manage RLUSD reserve infrastructure and provide fiduciary digital-asset custody alongside the existing NYDFS-regulated issuer. Its practical impact will depend on when RNTB begins operations and how much custody and settlement activity subsequently moves through the new entity.
