Bastion says OCC granted conditional approval for a national trust bank charter
The proposed trust bank would offer stablecoin custody, payments infrastructure, and white-label issuance without taking deposits or making loans.
Bastion says the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted preliminary conditional approval for a US national trust bank charter tied to stablecoin infrastructure. The proposed entity would sit under OCC supervision on top of Bastion’s state licenses, but it would not be allowed to accept deposits or make loans.
Bastion says it received preliminary conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a US trust bank charter. The proposed entity is named “Bastion Platforms National Trust Company.” The company frames the step as a move from a state-licensed posture into a federally supervised lane for stablecoin plumbing.
The scope matters as much as the label. Bastion says the proposed trust bank would be prohibited from accepting deposits or making loans, separating it from a conventional commercial bank. That constraint narrows the activity set to custody and infrastructure rather than balance-sheet banking.
Bastion says the charter would add federal supervision from the OCC on top of the state licenses it already holds. CEO Nassim Eddequiouaq tied the push to stablecoins’ role in payments and settlement, saying: “Stablecoins have moved from emerging technology into core financial infrastructure, and that requires a different standard of trust, governance and regulatory rigor,”
From New York Trust Charter to OCC Supervision: The Buildout and the Peer Set
Bastion positions the OCC step as part of a longer regulatory buildout. The company says it has been working toward federal supervision since acquiring a New York trust charter in February 2025.
Capital came in along the way. Bastion raised $14.6 million in September 2025 in a round led by Coinbase Ventures, with participation by Sony, the investment subsidiary of Samsung, the crypto arm of Andreessen Horowitz, and Hashed.
The peer set is getting crowded. Ripple is described as having conditional approval for a similar charter, while Circle and BitGo are described as having final approval. Kraken parent Payward, crypto infrastructure provider Zerohash, and payments company Block are described as having submitted applications.
The near-term market signal is not “banking” in the retail sense. It is the industry’s drift toward a standardized federal supervisor for custody and issuance rails, where counterparties can point to a single regulator rather than a patchwork of state-by-state permissions.
What a Non-Depository Trust Bank Could Mean for Stablecoin Custody and Issuance
Bastion says Bastion Platforms National Trust Company is intended to offer stablecoin custody and wallets, payment infrastructure, and white-label stablecoin issuance from a single federally regulated entity. For traders and market-structure watchers, that is a bid to make stablecoin rails look more like regulated market infrastructure and less like vendor risk.
The limitation is also the product. No deposits and no loans means the entity is not competing to be a full-service bank. It is competing to be the regulated counterparty for custody, wallet operations, and issuance tooling. That can simplify diligence for institutions that care less about consumer banking and more about operational controls, governance, and supervisory expectations.
The catch is execution risk. Bastion’s approval is described as “preliminary conditional approval,” and the packet provides neither the conditions nor a timeline to final approval or a go-live date. Until those details are public, counterparties are still underwriting a plan, not an operating trust bank.
My read: Federal supervision is becoming a competitive feature for stablecoin rails
The threshold that matters is finality. “Preliminary conditional approval” is a signal, not a finished product, and the missing piece is what the OCC required and how quickly Bastion can clear it.
If the charter converts to final approval and Bastion can publish a concrete launch plan with early client onboarding, the setup starts to look structural rather than narrative-driven. In practical terms, this matters if OCC supervision becomes the default checkbox that decides which stablecoin custody and issuance rails win institutional flow.
