The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has granted Bastion conditional preliminary approval for a national trust bank charter, the company said on September 18, 2026, in a release issued at 4:49 p.m. ET (10:49 p.m. in Paris). The bank will operate as Bastion Platforms National Trust Company. Bastion builds the infrastructure behind other companies’ stablecoins and sells none under its own brand.
Bastion runs stablecoin programs under its clients’ brands
Bastion sells a technology, operations and compliance stack to companies and financial institutions that want a stablecoin program without building the plumbing themselves. It covers custody, money movement, on- and off-ramps to fiat, and issuance under the client’s brand. The client keeps its brand, its users and the economics of the product.
That model is why the charter matters. A provider that holds an issuer’s reserves and executes mints and redemptions acts as a custodian, not just a software vendor. Federal supervision answers the question every institutional client asks: who is accountable for the assets if the provider goes under?
The line for national trust charters keeps growing
Bastion joins a short but telling list. Circle and BitGo already hold final approval and Ripple has conditional approval, while applications from Payward, Kraken’s parent company, Zerohash, and Block are still pending. The national trust bank charter has become the industry’s regulatory front door in the US.
The charter regulates payment rails, not just crypto custody
The release lists payment infrastructure among the approved activities, and that is what matters to a payments provider, including in Europe. The capability being regulated is moving value between fiat and a stablecoin on a third party’s behalf, under a single license. Token speculation is not the point.
- An issuer can outsource custody and issuance to a federally supervised third party.
- A bank can offer a stablecoin program without owning the technology.
- On- and off-ramps become a regulated service rather than a commercial contract.
- Liability in a failure is set out in a charter, not only in a contract.
“Stablecoins have moved from emerging technology into core financial infrastructure, and that requires a different standard of trust, governance and regulatory rigor,” said Nassim Eddequiouaq, Bastion’s chief executive.
For Europe, the useful comparison is custodian status, not MiCA, the EU regulation that governs token issuance. A firm that holds an issuer’s reserves in the EU falls under banking law or investment services law, depending on the case, with no dedicated category. The US has chosen to create that category, even if it fills it cautiously.