On October 21, 2026, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued its final rule implementing the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act) for payment stablecoin issuers subject to its jurisdiction.¹ The OCC is the first federal banking agency to finalize a rule under the GENIUS Act. The rule will likely cover most permitted payment stablecoin issuers (PPSIs), particularly the largest ones, and will take effect January 18, 2027, the same day as the GENIUS Act.² Along with the final rule, the OCC released revised weekly and quarterly reporting forms³ for PPSIs and a bulletin⁴ clarifying the process for filing applications and requesting waivers under the GENIUS Act. The application form itself has not yet been released. Below, we compare the final rule with the OCC’s March 2026 proposal⁵ on some key issues.

• Interest/Yield: The OCC dropped the proposed rebuttable presumption that a PPSI pays prohibited interest or yield under certain specified arrangements.⁶ The yield prohibition itself remains, but it now just tracks the language from the GENIUS Act.⁷ The preamble notes that the prohibition could capture certain indirect payments and that the OCC retains its anti-evasion authority under section 4.⁸ The OCC says it expects to address yield arrangements through its review of applications and ongoing supervision.⁹ It anticipates that, as it gains experience, it will be able to propose a rule clarifying the prohibition.¹⁰
• Reserve Requirements – Liquidity and Concentration: The OCC initially proposed two alternatives.¹¹ Option A was a principles-based standard with a quantitative safe harbor, and Option B made the quantitative requirements mandatory. The quantitative requirements consisted of: (i) at least 10% of reserve assets in deposits, insured shares, or Federal Reserve Bank balances, with no more than 50% of that amount maintained at any one eligible financial institution; (ii) at least 30% of reserve assets in those instruments plus amounts receivable unconditionally within five business days; (iii) a cap of 40% of reserve assets at any one eligible financial institution; and (iv) a weighted average maturity of no more than 20 days across the reserve portfolio. The final rule takes a “hybrid approach,” adopting Option A’s principles-based standard paired with reduced quantitative requirements.¹² The daily liquidity floor drops from 10% to 5%, and the 50% sublimit is eliminated.¹³ The 30% weekly liquidity requirement and the weighted average maturity requirement are also eliminated. A 40% limit is retained but now applies to exposure to any one counterparty, rather than to any one eligible financial institution, with exceptions provided for exposures to the U.S. government, exposures to an appropriate custodian resulting from reserve assets being held in custody by the custodian, and exposures resulting from centrally cleared repos and reverse repos. In exchange for lessening these requirements, the final rule adds the stress testing and buffer requirements described below.¹⁴
• Reserve Requirements – Stress Testing and Buffer: PPSIs must now conduct stress testing of their reserve asset portfolios.¹⁵ The testing must confirm that the portfolio of reserve assets will continue to equal or exceed outstanding issuance value in stressed conditions, including significant positive interest rate scenarios. A PPSI must also ensure that reserve asset value will continue to equal or exceed outstanding issuance value at all times and that the reserve asset portfolio will be capable of supporting timely redemption under both normal conditions and adverse economic, liquidity, market, and interest rate conditions, including, to the extent necessary, maintaining a buffer of reserve assets in excess of outstanding issuance value.¹⁶ No particular buffer level is mandated, and some PPSIs may not be required to maintain any buffer, depending on their reserve asset portfolio.¹⁷
• Reserve Requirements – Insured Deposits: The proposal would have required PPSIs with $25 billion or more in outstanding issuance value to hold at least 0.5% of reserves, capped at $500 million, as insured deposits.¹⁸ This requirement is eliminated in the final rule.¹⁹
• Reserve Requirements – Tokenized Assets: A tokenized form of an eligible reserve asset qualifies only if the holder of the token has the same rights as a holder of the asset itself.²⁰
• Capital: The proposal would have implemented individualized minimum capital requirements, measured in common equity tier 1 and additional tier 1 capital, with a $5 million floor for de novo issuers.²¹ It would have also required an operational backstop of 12 months of expenses.²² The final rule keeps the individualized minimum capital requirements and the separate operational backstop, and the preamble text discusses factors the OCC will consider in setting the capital requirements, adapted from OCC Bulletin 2007-21 for national trust banks.²³ The final rule differs from the proposal in several ways, such as the following:
  • The $5 million floor now applies on an ongoing basis.²⁴
  • Capital is now defined as total GAAP equity less goodwill and other intangible assets, deferred tax assets, and equity-funded operational backstop assets. This replaces the proposal’s bank-style capital elements.²⁵
  • The operational backstop is still 12 months of expenses, which must cover the total expenses of the PPSI.²⁶ However, under the final rule, a PPSI may exclude certain one-time expenses from the calculation and fund up to 50% of the backstop with qualifying debt. The 12-month period and requirement to cover the total expenses of the PPSI is more rigorous than the requirements of the OCC’s recent national trust charter approvals.
• Redemption: Once redemption requests exceeded 10% of outstanding issuance value in 24 hours, the proposal would have automatically extended the redemption period from two business days to seven calendar days.²⁷ The two-business-day limit is maintained, but the OCC eliminated the automatic extension.²⁸ A PPSI must notify the OCC within 24 hours if redemption requests exceed 10% of any brand’s outstanding issuance value in a 24-hour period.²⁹ It may then request an extension, which the OCC may grant or deny in its discretion. The OCC expects to use this authority “sparingly.”³⁰
• Definitions: Several definitions have changed.³¹ The final rule adds definitions (including “payment stablecoin holder,” “business day,” and “tokenized form”) and removes others. It does not define “digital asset service provider” (DASP) or clarify its scope, other than noting that PPSIs may also be DASPs.³² The definition of “customer” is narrowed to persons dealing directly with the issuer. The definition of “trading volume” is eliminated.
• Custody: The proposal’s self-custody hardware and software exclusion applied to a covered entity “solely on the basis” that it provides hardware or software to facilitate self-custody.³³ The final rule adds a control condition.³⁴ The exclusion now applies only where the entity neither controls nor holds itself out as controlling the relevant private keys associated with covered assets and does not provide or hold itself out as providing safekeeping or custodial services for those assets. The OCC declined to add a separate carve-out for ancillary services, believing the control standard to be sufficient.³⁵ The OCC also revised the covered asset custodial property requirements.³⁶ A covered custodian must now separately record and account for the assets of a covered customer, and appropriate steps to protect covered assets from creditors now include adopting, implementing, and maintaining written custody agreements.
• Permissible Activities: The OCC expands the proposed list of permitted activities for a PPSI. The proposal would have added the activities of assessing fees associated with purchasing or redeeming stablecoins, acting as principal or agent with respect to any payment stablecoin, and paying fees to facilitate customer transactions.³⁷ The final rule adopts these activities and adds several others, including holding as principal non-payment stablecoin digital assets as necessary to pay fees or conduct testing on distributed ledger-based platforms, establishing a trust arrangement under applicable law for reserve assets, and managing foreign exchange risk.³⁸ The OCC also clarified that the authority to undertake activities that “directly support” stablecoin issuance, redemption, reserve management, or custody includes hiring third parties to perform those supporting functions. In the preamble, the OCC rejects a narrow approach to construing what activities “directly support” those permissible activities, emphasizing that activities that “directly support” are broader than activities that are “necessary” or “closely connected to stablecoin issuance.”³⁹
• Compliance Deadline: Issuance of payment stablecoins after January 18, 2027, must comply with the new rule. Stablecoin issuers already approved by the OCC are not grandfathered. The OCC may grant a waiver of compliance for up to one year, but only for stablecoin issuers with applications pending with the OCC pursuant to the new rule as of January 18.⁴⁰ Substantial penalties are possible for noncompliance.

The OCC is the first federal banking agency to finalize its GENIUS Act rule. With the January 18, 2027, effective date approaching and the application form not yet released, prospective issuers, banks, and their partners should begin assessing how the final rule applies to their business models. The final rule leaves several important questions to be worked out through the application process and ongoing supervision, including how the OCC will evaluate yield arrangements, its expectations for the new stress test and buffer requirements, application of the new capital requirement, and the scope of activities that “directly support” stablecoin issuance, redemption, reserve management, or custody.

WilmerHale’s Financial Institutions and Blockchain and Cryptocurrency teams, which include former OCC officials and lawyers who have built and operated digital asset businesses, regularly advise clients on these issues. Please contact the authors to discuss what the final rule means for your business.