OCC Finalizes GENIUS Act Stablecoin Rule, Effective January 18, 2027

First Final GENIUS Act Rule

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) published the final rule implementing the GENIUS Act on Wednesday, becoming the first federal banking regulator to complete its stablecoin rulemaking. The rule takes effect on January 18, 2027, the same day the law itself does. It covers payment stablecoin issuers under OCC jurisdiction, including subsidiaries of national banks and federal savings associations, federally approved nonbank issuers, state-qualified issuers moving into the federal framework, foreign issuers within the agency's reach, and certain custody activities at OCC-supervised firms. Most requirements sit in a new section of the agency's regulations spanning reserve assets, redemption, risk management, audits and reporting, custody, applications, and a capital and operational backstop. “We are providing a clear, practical framework for payment stablecoin innovation, with strong standards for reserve backing, redemption, and risk management,” Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould said in the official announcement.

Yield Test Out, Case-by-Case Review

The sharpest change from the February proposal concerns rewards. The GENIUS Act bars issuers from paying holders any interest or APY merely for holding or retaining a payment stablecoin, and the proposal had added a rebuttable presumption that certain affiliate or third-party arrangements violated that ban. The final rule removes the presumption. In the final rule text, the agency wrote that, because payment stablecoins remain a nascent market, imposing a rebuttable presumption on the yield prohibition was inappropriate at this time. In effect, the ban rules out issuer-backed yield-bearing stablecoin products inside the national banking system. Oversight now runs case by case: the OCC will review issuer and third-party arrangements through license applications and ongoing supervision, act against evasion, and publish guidance when it finds violations. No safe harbor covers rewards programs already running before the effective date. Roughly 328 comments arrived on the proposal, from crypto firms, trade groups, banks, academics and individuals.

Two-Business-Day Redemptions Kept

Redemption mechanics stayed largely intact. Issuers must honor redemptions within two business days of a request. The proposal would have extended that deadline automatically to seven days whenever daily redemption requests topped 10% of a stablecoin brand's outstanding issuance; the final rule scraps the automatic extension. An issuer that crosses the 10% threshold in a single 24-hour period must notify the OCC within 24 hours and may request more time, which the agency can approve or deny. The capital floor also widened: the rule keeps a $5 million minimum and applies it to issuers beyond their first three years, where the proposal had limited the requirement to that initial window. On reserves, the final text leans more principles-based while keeping a daily liquidity requirement and limits on concentration with a single counterparty, and it adjusts to accommodate special purpose vehicle structures that protect holder rights.

Treasury Rulemaking Still Pending

What the rule leaves out matters as much as what it includes. Rules tied to the Bank Secrecy Act, anti-money laundering and OFAC sanctions are excluded and will arrive in a separate rulemaking with the Treasury Department; FinCEN and OFAC put forward their own requirements in April, covering suspicious activity reporting and sanctions compliance programs. The Federal Reserve's September draft of its own GENIUS rule, which took a similar presumption-based approach to yield, remains pending. The regulators collectively missed the statute's earlier July deadline for final rules. The OCC has also not said when it will start accepting applications and waiver requests from prospective issuers; Gould said in August that the agency aimed to issue a final rule by November so application processing could begin within the new year.

Banks Versus Platforms on Rewards

The OCC's head start makes its text the working baseline for the rest of the rulemaking race. The yield question stays unresolved in practice: banks argue platform rewards drain deposits, the industry contends venue incentives differ from issuer-paid interest, and a Senate attempt to rewrite the statute through the CLARITY Act failed. That leaves Coinbase Global and other venues running rewards to map compliance before January 2027 with no safe harbor behind them. Dropping the presumption also leaves room for platform structures that resemble yield farming, at least until supervision produces guidance. Foreign issuers still need registration and a Treasury comparability determination to serve U.S. users. The next concrete marker is the OCC's announcement of its application window.