Ripple secures national trust bank charter, bringing RLUSD under federal oversight
DeFi & Yields ·
Final approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency lets Ripple National Trust Bank manage reserves for its stablecoin and offer custody services to institutional clients.
The OCC granted final approval for Ripple National Trust Bank, according to The Block, a step that allows Ripple to hold RLUSD reserves and provide enterprise digital-asset custody under federal banking supervision rather than through state-level trust charters alone. The approval covers the entity behind RLUSD, a stablecoin that Decrypt reports at $2.6 billion.
The charter places Ripple's reserve management and custody operations inside a regulatory framework overseen directly by a federal banking authority, a status few stablecoin issuers currently hold. For RLUSD, operating under an OCC-supervised trust bank may lower the perceived counterparty risk tied to how its reserves are held and audited, since federal supervision carries different compliance and reporting obligations than state trust structures.
The approval lands alongside a string of commercial integrations built around RLUSD and the XRP Ledger. Robinhood has agreed to integrate RLUSD for treasury and institutional trading, with the stablecoin expected to reach the Robinhood app later this year; the arrangement also draws on Ripple Treasury for cash management and Ripple Prime for lending and trading through Bitstamp, according to CryptoPotato. Separately, Ripple has partnered with C2FO to speed supplier payments on the XRP Ledger using RLUSD, and has been expanding custody arrangements with BNY Mellon to cover both XRP and RLUSD while exploring tokenized trade finance for invoice financing.
Taken together, the OCC charter and the custody and payments tie-ups point to Ripple positioning RLUSD as infrastructure for institutional treasury and settlement use, rather than solely a trading instrument. Seven distinct sources are tracking elements of this cluster, spanning the regulatory approval, the Robinhood integration, and the BNY Mellon custody expansion.
What remains unclear is the timeline for Ripple National Trust Bank to begin operating under its new charter, the specific terms of reserve custody arrangements with BNY Mellon, and whether other stablecoin issuers will pursue similar national trust bank status following Ripple's approval.