OCC Report Finds Nine US Banks Restricted Services, Digital Assets Among Targets

Nine Banks, 100,000 Complaints, 420,000 Pages

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released findings on Wednesday, October 14, showing that each of the nine largest national banks in the United States maintained policies that could restrict customer access to services based on political beliefs, religious affiliation or lawful business activity. The review covered 2020 through September 2025 and drew on nearly 100,000 complaints and about 420,000 pages of internal documents. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC, TD Bank and BMO were the institutions examined. The regulator concluded that broad reputational risk policies often replaced measurable financial criteria with subjective judgment.

One documented case involves JPMorgan's payment subsidiary WePay, which in February 2021 terminated a merchant account selling Donald Trump and Make America Great Again campaign merchandise. An internal employee described the closure as a violation of WePay's terms of service, which covered Trump-related goods. PNC declined credit to a media company whose owner was closely tied to prominent conservative political and religious organizations, and one internal email questioned whether the bank could justify any dealings with the firm. The review also surfaced a case involving an organization whose political activity supported Democratic candidates, indicating such restrictions were not confined to one party.

Beyond politics, the OCC identified industry-specific limits affecting firearms manufacturers, coal companies, oil and gas firms, detention facilities, tobacco businesses and digital asset activity. Some banks imposed internal social standards on lawful gun sellers, including rules on magazine capacity and sales to customers under 21. The report also flagged an inconsistency: certain affluent clients kept their accounts despite generating harsher negative coverage, while others lost service over unproven allegations. The regulator acknowledged it could not determine how many customers were affected in total or calculate the full financial damage. Comptroller Jonathan Gould said the findings offer “irrefutable evidence” that the nation's biggest banks refused service, terminated accounts and discriminated against lawful businesses, and he warned that voluntary corrections may fall short because reputational screening had resurfaced under other labels such as brand risk and franchise risk.

Digital Assets on the Restricted List

The review was mandated by an August 2025 executive order from President Donald Trump directing agencies to prevent what he called “unlawful debanking.” In its 47-page report, the OCC said certain banks maintained public and nonpublic policies restricting services for industries including oil and gas, tobacco, firearms and digital assets. The regulator found that many institutions also cut off banking for digital asset issuers, exchanges and administrators, usually on financial crime grounds.

The industry had labeled the practice Operation Chokepoint 2.0, a nod to an Obama-era anti-fraud initiative, after more than 30 technology and crypto executives claimed in November 2024 that they had been denied banking access. Trump's order followed those claims, which asserted that the federal government under former President Joe Biden may have pressured financial institutions into cutting services to crypto firms. Despite naming digital assets among the restricted sectors, the report included no specific examples of debanking tied to crypto activity. The agency stated it could not measure, on a comprehensive basis, the full scale of debanking or alleged debanking across the nine banks it reviewed. Gould's public remarks centered on coal and firearms rather than crypto. On coal, he said the decisions were not based on financial risk, and that banks pointed instead to negative coverage, public protests and the reputational fallout of backing the industry. He closed with a broader message: fair access to financial services is an obligation that must be met, not a slogan. The Federal Reserve has separately sought public feedback on a proposal that critics say could end Operation Chokepoint 2.0, a parallel track to the OCC's findings. For the nine institutions, the pressure is still building, and the harder question is whether repealing controversial policies also removes the discretion that let them shape customer decisions.

The clearest read of the releases is the gap between scope and evidence. Digital asset activity sits on the restricted list, yet every documented case study involves political merchandise, media, coal or firearms, and the 47 pages carry no crypto-specific examples. That leaves the industry's central claim, quantified only through the November 2024 complaints of more than 30 executives, unverified by the regulator's own file. The enforcement question now turns on structure rather than rhetoric: reputational risk has been stripped from bank examinations, and Gould has said he is not convinced the banks' own corrections go far enough, so any follow-up rulemaking that names digital asset firms would carry more weight than this report's sector list.