Bastion Wins Conditional OCC Approval for National Trust Bank Charter

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has granted Bastion preliminary conditional approval for a national trust bank charter, the stablecoin infrastructure company said in a release on Sept. 18. Licensed as Bastion Platforms National Trust Company, the proposed bank would put custody, payments, and white-label stablecoin issuance under one federally supervised entity. Cointelegraph reported the approval on Sept. 19.

The charter adds federal supervision to state licenses Bastion already holds, which the company said strengthens its position with enterprise and financial institution clients. Those clients answer to their own regulators, auditors, and risk committees, and the release frames a single federally regulated counterparty as the way to meet those expectations. The approval is conditional and preliminary, so Bastion must still satisfy the OCC's remaining conditions before the bank can operate under the charter.

A national trust bank is a limited-purpose institution. It cannot accept deposits or make loans, which separates it from a conventional commercial bank, Cointelegraph noted. The charter covers fiduciary activity rather than balance-sheet lending, so Bastion's business stays on custody, movement, and issuance services instead of taking on credit risk.

Under the charter, Bastion plans fiduciary custody of USDC and other digital assets that comply with the GENIUS Act, plus white-label wallet and issuance services for enterprise clients. That work includes minting, redemption, and conversion between stablecoins and fiat, the release says. Bastion will also keep supplying technology and operational support to other regulated issuers, with those issuers remaining the issuer of record on the tokens involved.

The company issues no stablecoin of its own. Its model leaves the brand, the users, and the economics with the client, while Bastion runs the custody, movement, on-ramps and off-ramps, and issuance stack behind the client's program, according to the release. Sony Bank's global stablecoin initiative runs on Bastion technology, the company said, which gives the charter bid a live enterprise reference point beyond the paperwork.

Bastion has been working toward federal supervision since February 2025, when it acquired a New York trust charter. That deal gave the company a state-level trust footing, and the OCC application asked to convert that footing into a national charter. The Sept. 18 announcement puts Bastion in a small group of crypto companies to have secured conditional approval at the federal level.

"Stablecoins have moved from emerging technology into core financial infrastructure, and that requires a different standard of trust, governance and regulatory rigor," chief executive Nassim Eddequiouaq said in the release. He added that enterprises and financial institutions can now reach stablecoins through a federally regulated counterparty with controls and oversight they already expect from banks. The company said institutional demand is growing faster than the number of providers able to meet enterprise-grade regulatory and operational standards.

Alongside the charter news, Bastion appointed four people to its board and advisory bench, all drawn from established payments, banking, and compliance roles. Colleen Taylor joins the board of directors after serving as president of U.S. merchant services at American Express, where she led relationships with millions of U.S. merchants, with earlier senior posts at Wells Fargo, Mastercard, and Capital One across merchant services, payments, and treasury management, the announcement says.

Michael Patterson also joins the board. He served as chief compliance officer at the institutional crypto lender and broker Genesis, spent more than a decade leading EY's compliance risk management business in financial services, and earlier ran risk and control for Merrill Lynch's institutional business. Stuart Breslow joins as an advisor after more than ten years as chief compliance officer at Morgan Stanley, followed by senior positions at McKinsey and Google advising financial services clients on compliance and regulatory technology.

The fourth appointee is Gabriella Fitzgerald, who joins as an advisor. She most recently served as chief executive for health care payments at Optum Financial, previously served as president for North America at Western Union, and spent more than two decades in senior positions at American Express. President and chief operating officer Caroline Friedman said the four bring the payments, risk, compliance, and governance background of the institutions Bastion's clients come from, adding that the company wants that background in the room as it builds compliance into the product.

The release names Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase Ventures among Bastion's backers. A September 2025 funding round of $14.6 million was led by Coinbase Ventures, with participation from Sony, the investment arm of Samsung, the crypto arm of Andreessen Horowitz, and the crypto venture firm Hashed. The Sony connection runs deeper than the cap table, since Sony Bank's stablecoin work already runs on Bastion's stack.

The approval lands in a crowded queue of crypto companies seeking the same federal status. Ripple has received conditional approval for a similar charter, while Circle and BitGo have received final approval. The parent company of Kraken, Payward, the infrastructure provider Zerohash, and the payments company Block have also submitted applications. The pattern shows trust charters becoming the standard route for crypto companies that want to offer custody and issuance without becoming full-service banks.

For Bastion, the charter would consolidate stablecoin issuance, custody, and conversion inside one regulated counterparty rather than across separate state licenses. Enterprises buying white-label issuance get minting, redemption, custody, wallets, and payment rails from that single entity, while other regulated issuers can still use Bastion's technology with themselves as issuer of record. That two-track setup, direct issuance plus infrastructure for third-party issuers, is the business the OCC reviewed.

What remains is the conditional part. Preliminary approval means the OCC has signed off on the charter in principle while holding back final authority until Bastion meets the agency's remaining conditions. The release does not specify those conditions or give a date for final approval, so the bank cannot yet operate under the national charter.