The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency will publish final rules implementing the GENIUS Act's stablecoin framework by November, Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould told attendees at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium on Wednesday. "We will have a final rule out by November," Gould said, after the agency spent months reviewing industry feedback on its proposal.
The commitment gives stablecoin issuers a concrete deadline after a period of uncertainty. The OCC released a 376-page notice of proposed rulemaking in February, and other agencies including the Treasury Department, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve Board have been working in parallel on their own pieces of the framework. None of the regulators managed to release finalized rules by an earlier July deadline, leaving issuers waiting on clarity.
What the GENIUS Act Requires
The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act, signed into law in July 2025, creates the first dedicated federal regulatory regime for payment stablecoins. It sets January 2027 as the effective date by which the framework must be operational, with January 18 marking the deadline by which regulations need to be finalized. Under the OCC's proposed rulemaking, the agency modeled its stablecoin issuer licensing process on the existing national bank charter application, including a safe harbor that would deem a substantially complete application approved after 120 days if the OCC has not specifically denied it.
A Rush of Charter Applications
The scale of industry interest has already become visible in the OCC's other GENIUS Act track. The law also allows national trust banks to become permitted stablecoin issuers, and that provision has triggered a wave of interest from both traditional lenders and newer fintech firms: nearly 30 de novo applications for national trust bank charters were filed in the months following the GENIUS Act's signing, through the end of February 2026 alone, according to industry trackers. That pace suggests issuers are positioning themselves to move quickly once the OCC's final rule removes the remaining uncertainty.
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What Comes Next
With final rules now targeted for November, stablecoin issuers will have roughly two months to prepare applications before the GENIUS Act's compliance deadline arrives in January 2027. Gould's comments suggest the OCC intends to be the first of the four agencies to cross the finish line, potentially setting the template the FDIC and Federal Reserve follow as they finalize their own pieces of the stablecoin framework.
