Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure company owned by Stripe, said Tuesday that it has received conditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to form a national fiat bank.
The charter would allow Bridge National Trust Bank to issue stablecoins, maintain digital assets, and manage reserves under direct federal oversight. This is the latest step in Stripe’s broader push into blockchain-based payments since acquiring Bridge for $1.1 billion in 2024.
“This approval allows Bridge to help businesses, fintechs, crypto businesses, and financial institutions build with digital dollars within a clear federal framework,” the company said in the press release.
Bridge says its systems already meet the compliance standards outlined in the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, the law passed last year that aims to regulate stablecoin issuers. Federal banking regulators, including the OCC, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., have not yet instituted the specific regulations required by the GENIUS Act, but they are currently going through that process.
Bridge is part of a growing group of companies seeking to create stable products within a federal framework. In December, Circle, Ripple, Paxos, Fidelity Digital Assets, and BitGo all received similar conditional approvals from the OCC, and Erebor Bank was granted a conditional national bank charter in October. Bridge applied for its charter in October and OCC records show it signed it last week.
The company currently manages stablecoin issuance for products such as Phantom’s CASH and MetaMask’s mUSD through Stripe’s Open Issuance platform.
The OCC has not announced a timetable for final approval.
