Revolut Wins Conditional OCC Approval for 2027 US Bank Launch With Stablecoin Plans

Conditional Approval, Not a Charter Yet

Revolut has cleared the first of three federal hurdles on its path to becoming a US bank: the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has granted preliminary, conditional approval for the fintech's national bank charter application, the company announced on September 3, with the OCC's approval document dated September 2. The proposed entity, Revolut Bank US, N.A., will be headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, with initial capital of roughly $95 million and around 160 employees at launch. Planned as a branchless, full-service digital bank, it would deliver deposits, lending, payments, digital-asset and lifestyle services through Revolut's own app to retail and business customers across the United States. The company filed its charter application in March and is targeting a launch in the first half of 2027. Today, Revolut reaches its American customers through Lead Bank, an FDIC-member partner, for prepaid cards, credit and payment services; a charter of its own would let the bank hold deposits directly without depending on a partner for core account management. The approval is explicitly not final: Revolut must still secure deposit insurance from the FDIC, obtain Federal Reserve approval, satisfy the OCC's pre-opening requirements and return to the regulator for final clearance. Retail foreign-exchange trading for individuals is excluded from this approval and would require a separate OCC non-objection. Group co-founder and CEO Nik Storonsky described the decision as “a critical first step” toward establishing Revolut Bank US, according to the company's announcement.

Stablecoin and Custody Plans

The crypto dimension is where the charter becomes relevant to the market. The OCC's approval document outlines a plan for Revolut Bank US to provide digital-asset custody — safeguarding customers' private keys — through Revolut Ltd, the group's FCA-supervised UK affiliate, in a structure that does not qualify as trust business; the bank itself would hold no digital assets on its balance sheet. Custody, rather than spot trading, is the scope the filing describes. Deposit and custody customers are slated to move stablecoins and other digital assets across borders — a function reminiscent of a bridge protocol, but executed inside a regulated banking wrapper. The bank additionally plans to offer a Revolut-branded stablecoin through a third party: it would not act as the issuer and would not manage the backing reserves, limiting its role to marketing, customer access and custody via an affiliate, with adherence to the GENIUS Act and related rules once they take effect. That statute, enacted in July 2025, reserves stablecoin issuance for licensed entities and gives the OCC oversight of reserves, redemption and audits — the same framework behind dedicated issuance rails such as Stable (Stablechain). The business plan projects digital-asset services at less than 2% of the bank's revenue in its first three years. Revolut is not alone in this pipeline: the OCC has previously issued conditional approvals to Coinbase, Paxos, BitGo, Ripple and Circle, and last month to World Liberty Financial. Comptroller Jonathan Gould has argued that crypto firms and other newcomers deserve the chance to become federally supervised banks; since 2025 the office has received 40 new charter applications, approving 21 and rejecting two. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Bybit.

2027 Launch and the GENIUS Act Timeline

COINOTAG's reading: the September 2 letter is an interim, conditional decision — not a final charter — and its conditions bind Revolut Bank US until the FDIC, the Federal Reserve and the OCC itself each sign off. The load-bearing document for the stablecoin plan is the GENIUS Act, enacted in July 2025, which restricts issuance to licensed entities and assigns the OCC supervisory authority over reserves, redemption, audits and custody; Revolut's third-party issuance model must conform to that statute before any token reaches US customers. With a first-half 2027 launch target and sub-2% revenue expectations, near-term market impact is modest, but a chartered bank with custody and stablecoin rails — positioned alongside the Best Crypto Exchanges it already competes with — signals deepening bank-crypto integration in the world's largest financial market.