OCC Opens Three Bank Doors to Stablecoins and AI Agents

U.S. financial regulators have issued conditional approvals for three new national trust banks.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) on Friday (Sept. 18) granted those approvals for Agora National Trust Bank, Catena Trust Bank, while allowing the conversion of Bastion Platforms Trust Company into a national bank.

“If you are a bank, you cannot rely on simple fintech unless they are federally regulated,” Bastion CEO Nassim Eddequiouaq told The Wall Street Journal in an interview Friday.

“We can now be that regulated partner for all of the largest financial institutions in and outside of the U.S., who want to launch products here.”

As that report noted, Bastion issues white-label stablecoins for other companies, and oversees custody of holding reserves and customer wallets. WSJ also points out the increasing traction stablecoins are getting in the mainstream financial world, as advocates champion them for quicker transactions with lower fees than wire transfers.

“There’s going to be this expectation that banks can actually transact 24/7 for a fraction of a cent,” Eddequiouaq said.

Catena, meanwhile, is noteworthy as it says it is, per its website, developing financial infrastructure specifically for artificial intelligence agents, including accounts, payments, treasury functions and controls over what agents can do with money.

“We’re not bolting AI requirements onto a legacy platform,” the site says. “We’re building from the ground up: deterministic policy enforcement, immutable audit trails, and verifiable agent identity.”

Agora applied for its charter in April. In addition to its AUSD stablecoin, the company has said it is developing a full financial operating system for global businesses, including settlement infrastructure, treasury management, fiat connectivity, and tools that help companies interact with digital dollars.

“The charter is the regulatory layer that makes all of that possible at scale,” Agora CEO and Co-Founder Nick van Eck wrote in a blog post at the time. “Operating without a U.S. federal charter means renting the rails in the world’s most important financial market.”

The OCC said in August that it had received 40 de novo applications during the prior 18 months, including applications for national trust banks. By comparison, the regulator received 48 applications during the 14 years from 2011 through 2024.

“The OCC’s 40 applications show the renewed demand for federal charters,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this month. “The services attached to those charters show which parts of banking the new entrants want to control.”