Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure company owned by Stripe, said on Tuesday that it has received conditional approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to form a national trust bank.
The charter would let Bridge National Trust Bank issue stablecoins, store digital assets and manage reserves under direct federal oversight. It’s the latest step in Stripe’s broader push for blockchain-based payments since it acquired Bridge for $1.1 billion in 2024.
“This approval positions 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 put in place the specific rules mandated by the GENIUS Act, but they are moving through that process now.
Bridge is part of a growing group of companies seeking to build stablecoin 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 canceled last week.
The company currently operates stablecoin issuance for products such as Phantom’s CASH and MetaMask’s mUSD via Stripe’s Open Issuance platform.
The OCC has not announced a timeline for final approval.
