Five crypto giants obtain federal passport: the new OCC regime changes the entire payments game

The turning point Wall Street feared has just arrived. In December 2025, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) American has approved the transformation of Ripple, Circle, Paxos, BitGo, and Fidelity Digital Assets into federal trust banks. It’s not just a rebranding, but the first true direct access to the Federal Reserve’s payment system for crypto institutions — a door Wall Street wanted to keep firmly closed.

What the crypto industry has gained with this license

For over a decade, crypto companies have operated as intruders in the traditional banking system. Every international payment, every dollar regulation, had to go through banking intermediaries — the so-called “correspondent banking” system — with high costs, delays, and an ever-present risk: sudden service termination.

The federal license not only changes this, but overturns the entire economic model.

Once approved to open a master account with the Federal Reserve, institutions like Circle and Ripple will be able to connect directly to Fedwire, the federal settlement system. This means real-time final dollar settlements, without intermediaries, without T+1 or T+2 waiting periods.

The impact on fees? Potentially enormous. Analyzing public Federal Reserve data for 2026 and the sector’s fee structure, a direct connection model could reduce overall settlement costs by 30-50% for high-frequency, high-value transactions. For Circle — which manages nearly $80 billion in USDC reserves with massive daily flows — the annual savings on fees alone could reach hundreds of millions of dollars.

This is not marginal optimization. It’s a structural reconfiguration of costs.

The very nature of stablecoins is changing

Until yesterday, USDC and RLUSD were “digital vouchers issued by tech companies.” Their security depended on the solidity of the issuer and the partner banks holding the reserves — like when Circle had $3.3 billion locked at Silicon Valley Bank in 2023.

Now, reserves will be placed in a trust system under OCC federal supervision, legally separated from the parent company. It’s not a federal CBDC, not FDIC insurance, but the combination of “100% reserve + federal supervision + legal fiduciary duty” transforms these stablecoins from niche products into instruments with a credit profile superior to most offshore alternatives.

For international payments, this means even more. Ripple’s ODL (On-Demand Liquidity) product, previously tied to banking hours and fiat channel availability, could operate in real-time and continuously — the conversion between fiat and on-chain assets will no longer be interrupted.

Why it happened right now: the role of the GENIUS Act and the Trump administration

In 2023, during the banking crisis, crypto institutions underwent systematic “de-banking.” Silvergate Bank and Signature Bank shut down crypto services under informal regulatory pressure. The Biden-era approach was simple: isolate crypto risk from the system, not regulate it.

Everything changed with Trump’s return and the signing of the GENIUS Act in July 2025.

For the first time at the federal level, stablecoins received a clear legal status. The law recognizes non-bank institutions as “qualified issuers of payment stablecoins” — provided they are supported 100% by highly liquid assets (cash in dollars, US short-term Treasury securities). This definitively excludes algorithmic stablecoins and high-risk structures.

But there’s an even more strategic element: the White House explicitly stated that regulated dollar stablecoins help maintain the US dollar’s international dominance in the digital era, increasing demand for US Treasuries. Stablecoins are no longer seen as a risk, but as a tool to extend American financial power.

In this context, OCC’s approval becomes the natural implementation of a broader strategy.

How the critical sector reacts (and what could block everything)

Wall Street did not passively accept this decision. The Bank Policy Institute (which represents JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citibank) raised three main accusations:

Regulatory arbitrage: crypto companies obtain a trust license to conduct systemically important banking activities, but their parent companies circumvent consolidated supervision by the Federal Reserve required of banking holding companies. If a bug in the parent’s software caused losses to bank assets, a dangerous “regulatory gray zone” could emerge.

Violation of the separation between banking and commerce: allowing tech giants like Ripple and Circle to own banks creates an unprecedented conflict of interest. Could a company use bank funds to support its own activities? Moreover, these companies escape obligations like the Community Reinvestment Act.

Uncovered systemic risk: without FDIC insurance, in case of panic over stablecoin peg loss, there’s no safety net. A run could quickly escalate into a systemic crisis.

The final obstacle: the master account at the Federal Reserve

Having the OCC license is not the end. The last and most crucial step — the actual opening of the master account at the Federal Reserve — remains an open and potentially contested issue.

The Wyoming Custodia Bank precedent shows that the gap between license and actual Fedwire access can be huge. The Federal Reserve retains independent discretionary power. Traditional banks will pressure it to impose very stringent requirements: demonstrate AML capabilities comparable to JPMorgan, provide additional capital guarantees, pass complex stress tests.

This will be the real battleground in the coming months.

The fault line shifting

This approval is not the end of a controversy, but the beginning of a new competitive phase in the American financial system.

On one side, strong state regulators like the New York State Department of Financial Services could challenge the expansion of federal preeminence — sparking legal battles over who has final authority over crypto.

On the other side, many provisions of the GENIUS Act still need to be specified: capital requirements, risk isolation, cybersecurity standards will become new lobbying fronts.

Meanwhile, the landscape of the financial sector is changing. Traditional banks might acquire crypto companies to strengthen technological capabilities, or crypto firms could become true system protagonists. A completely reimagined financial map is possible.

What is certain: crypto finance is no longer on the margins. It is now part of the system. And the system itself is beginning to reckon with what it truly means to integrate a parallel payment infrastructure — faster, cheaper, controlled by tech companies — into the heart of the traditional banking monopoly.