Major U.S. banking trade groups, led by the American Bankers Association, submitted comment letters on February 11–12, 2026 urging OCC to slow down approvals of crypto-linked bank charters while digital-asset rules are being rewritten. Their coordinated message is that charter decisions should not outpace the regulatory perimeter that will ultimately govern these business models.
The letters target a pivotal gateway into the U.S. financial system: the chartering process that could give crypto firms broader access to payment systems and federal licensing. Banks are effectively arguing that expanding charter access now would hardwire new participants into core rails before lawmakers and regulators finish defining the rulebook.
Why banks want a pause before charters move forward
In the filings, the trade groups framed the requested pause as a prudential guardrail rather than a political posture. They warned that granting crypto-focused charters inside what they describe as a “regulatory gray zone” could expose the broader system to unresolved safety-and-soundness questions, especially around supervision and resolution. Their core risk claim is that recent crypto-sector failures can stress frameworks that were not designed for these operational and balance-sheet dynamics.
They also emphasized timing and coherence, pointing to legislation and guidance still in flux, including provisions tied to the GENIUS Act, which they said could take years to fully implement. The argument is that approving charters ahead of finalized standards could create uneven oversight and inconsistent supervisory expectations across institutions that are functionally competing in adjacent markets. In plain terms, the banks are asking regulators to sequence “rules first, charters second” to avoid retrofitting controls after the fact.
Safety and operational resilience featured prominently, with the trade groups spotlighting cybersecurity exposure, operational continuity, and insolvency scenarios they believe are not sufficiently addressed under current guidance. They positioned these concerns as industry-wide, not firm-specific, and treated them as issues that should be resolved through a unified rule set rather than piecemeal charter conditions. The filings treat operational risk as a first-order design constraint, not a compliance afterthought.
Competitive parity was the third leg of the push, with banks arguing that federal charters for crypto firms could create advantages without equivalent capital and conduct expectations applied to traditional deposit-taking institutions. In their framing, products like yield-bearing stablecoin structures raise questions about the boundary between innovation and regulatory arbitrage. The fairness concern is that similar economic functions could end up governed by different prudential burdens depending on the charter path.
What regulators may do next and what it means for the market
The letters land in the middle of a broader rule overhaul across agencies, which the banks themselves cited as evidence that the landscape is still shifting. They pointed to the Federal Reserve withdrawing certain crypto-asset guidance and to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency confirming that banks can hold some crypto assets, arguing that these moves heighten the need for a consistent end-state framework before expanding charter approvals. Their implication is that regulators should stabilize supervisory expectations before scaling access to federal licenses.
One quote in the reporting captured the structural shift banks appear to be trying to manage: “Gaining Fed access and national licensing could lead to skipping the whole middle layer—no SWIFT, no correspondent chains, just native, regulated settlement,” said Anthony Agoshkov, co-founder of Marvel Capital. That framing spotlights the strategic significance of charters as a potential shortcut into regulated settlement pathways.
Practically, the banking groups’ intervention points to a near-term operating environment where charter applications face heavier scrutiny, approvals—if granted—carry tighter conditions, and timelines stretch. For crypto-native firms, that could reinforce an interim strategy of leaning on existing bank partnerships or state-level options while federal rules crystallize. The immediate commercial takeaway is that time-to-market for federal charter ambitions may lengthen as regulators weigh prudential risk against the goal of moving activity onto regulated rails.
