- OCC grants Ripple final approval for Ripple National Trust Bank, 10 months after conditional approval.
- Bank will manage RLUSD reserves, act as collateral trustee, and offer digital asset custody.
- Community bankers have sued the OCC over crypto charters; Sen. Warren calls them illegal.
Ripple announced Monday that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has granted final approval for Ripple National Trust Bank, a federally supervised national trust bank. The approval completes a process that began with conditional approval in December 2025, alongside Circle, Paxos, Fidelity Digital Assets and BitGo.
Once operational, the bank will manage the segregated reserves backing Ripple USD (RLUSD) and act as collateral trustee of those reserves for RLUSD holders. It will also provide fiduciary digital asset custody services to enterprises.
RLUSD will still be issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company, Ripple’s NYDFS-regulated limited purpose trust company. Consequently, the stablecoin will now sit under both state and federal supervision.
“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 CEO Brad Garlinghouse said. In a tweet, he added: “The revolution isn’t happening outside the system. It’s happening from within it.”
Launched in December 2024, RLUSD has a market cap of about $2.6 billion, per CoinGecko. Ripple says the stablecoin is used across its payments network and Ripple Prime brokerage, with BNY as primary reserve custodian.
Meanwhile, XRP rose 0.5% over 24 hours to $1.29, per CoinGecko. It was one of only two top-10 coins to gain on the day alongside ZCash.
However, the national trust charters remain contested. Sen. Elizabeth Warren argued in a letter to Comptroller Jonathan Gould that the approvals violated the National Bank Act.
“These companies are effectively crypto banks that want to evade the fundamental safeguards and obligations that come with being a bank,” she wrote. The Digital Chamber urged the OCC to “defend these charter approvals and continue developing clear supervisory expectations for trust banks.”
Earlier this month, the Independent Community Bankers of America sued the OCC, calling the charters “a side door into the banking system for crypto firms.” Ripple said it will keep working with the OCC, NYDFS and other regulators as the bank begins operations and the U.S. implements the GENIUS Act’s stablecoin framework.
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