The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency approved three new national trust bank proposals on a single day, extending the federal charter perimeter to stablecoin issuance, digital asset custody and payments infrastructure built for autonomous software. The three conditional approvals — Bastion Platforms, Catena Trust Bank and Agora National Trust Bank — are dated Sept. 18, 2026, and none of the institutions will take deposits or carry federal deposit insurance.
What changed
Bastion Platforms Trust Company, LLC, a New York state trust company, received conditional approval to convert into an uninsured national trust bank under charter 27198, and will operate as Bastion Platforms National Trust Company with its main office at 216 Bowery, New York. The OCC decision lists white-label stablecoin issuance, white-label custodial wallet services in a fiduciary capacity, conversion services for custody customers and issuer services to other regulated stablecoin issuers among the bank's permitted activities. The approval requires a minimum of $6 million in tier 1 capital, at least the greater of 50 percent of that capital or $3 million in Eligible Liquid Assets, plus 180 days of operating expenses in the same asset class.
Catena Trust Bank, National Association, a proposed de novo institution wholly owned by Catena Labs, Inc., obtained preliminary conditional approval for charter 27214. Its plan covers custody, investment management, trust, conversion and clearing, and execution services for fiat currency, investment securities and digital assets, including payment stablecoins that the decision says must comply with the GENIUS Act once the law is effective. The OCC said it received two comment letters from trade groups representing banks on the application. Tier 1 capital is set at a minimum of $10 million, of which the greater of 50 percent or $5 million must sit in Eligible Liquid Assets.
Agora National Trust Bank, chartered as 27207 and wholly owned by Agora Atlas Corp., would focus on dollar-backed stablecoin issuance and reserve maintenance in a non-fiduciary capacity, digital asset custody, transaction services covering payment processing, settlement and cross-border flows, and fiduciary investment advisory services for enterprise clients. Its customers will be institutional and business participants only, and the bank faces the same $10 million tier 1 capital floor.
Baseline
The decisions sketch how large the uninsured trust bank segment has become. As of March 31, 2026, OCC-supervised uninsured national trust banks reported $7.2 trillion in assets under administration, split between $1.7 trillion in custody and safekeeping accounts and $5.5 trillion in fiduciary accounts, according to the Bastion and Agora decisions. The Catena decision puts the same aggregate at $7.7 trillion for the same date, with $2.1 trillion in custody and $5.6 trillion in fiduciary accounts — a discrepancy the agency does not explain.
The trio also fits a run of charters rather than a one-off. The Catena and Agora decisions cite earlier approvals of the same kind, including Foris DAX National Trust Bank (Feb. 20, 2026), Bridge National Trust Bank (Feb. 12, 2026), Connectia Trust and Laser Digital National Trust Bank, Ripple National Trust Bank (Dec. 12, 2025) and BitGo Bank and Trust, National Association (Dec. 12, 2025).
Why it matters
Two of the approvals put stablecoin issuance directly inside a federal banking charter, and both are conditioned on the bank conforming, ceasing or divesting those activities if the GENIUS Act and its implementing rules require it. For an industry that has largely operated under state trust charters and money transmitter licences, that is a change of supervisory venue rather than a change of product. A second theme sits in the applications themselves. The charter file Catena lodged with the OCC describes the organisers' purpose as building "a regulated, AI-native financial institution designed to serve the emerging agent economy", providing "the trust, compliance, and settlement infrastructure that AI systems require to transact safely and at scale". Bastion, for its part, proposes to issue stablecoins on behalf of other companies and to act as a fiduciary custodian of wallets and reserves, a role that only holds if the entity doing it carries a federal charter.
Limits
Preliminary conditional approval does not mean a bank is open for business: Catena and Agora must still meet preopening requirements before final approval, and the OCC reserves the right to modify, suspend or rescind its decision in the meantime. Bastion's move is a conditional approval of an existing state trust company, not a new entrant, and each of the three decisions bars the bank from taking deposits or presenting stablecoins as federally insured. The GENIUS Act rules are not yet in force, so the stablecoin permissions remain contingent on future compliance. The capital thresholds are regulatory floors, not assessments of solvency or of the reserves behind each stablecoin programme, and the two different asset-under-administration totals show that even the baseline data inside the decisions is not fully consistent. Nothing in the decisions commits any of the three banks to a launch date: the approvals lapse if capital is not raised within 12 months or the bank does not open within 18 months.
Sources
- OCC Corporate Decision #1391 (Bastion Platforms): occ.gov
- OCC Corporate Decision #1392 (Catena Trust Bank): occ.gov
- OCC Corporate Decision #1393 (Agora National Trust Bank): occ.gov
- OCC public charter file, Catena Trust Bank, National Association: occ.gov
