Banks Battle the GENIUS Act: Agora’s Bold Federal Charter Move!

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Banks push back on GENIUS Act rules as Agora races for a federal charter

Leading banking groups in the US have requested that the Treasury Department and the FDIC temporarily halt reviews of proposed rules related to the GENIUS Act. They want to wait until the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) completes its plans for regulating stablecoins. At the same time, a new stablecoin company, Agora, applied for a national bank charter on April 24th, hoping to get established before these regulations are finalized.

Summary

  • The American Bankers Association and the Bank Policy Institute asked Treasury and the FDIC to wait 60 days after the OCC finishes its framework before running parallel comment periods, arguing the proposals are structurally interdependent.
  • Agora CEO Nick van Eck called the banks’ stance “not much of a surprise,” adding that their real concern is deposit flight and the loss of yield spread between near-zero deposit rates and Fed reserves.
  • Van Eck said Agora’s charter, if approved by year-end, would allow the company to issue stablecoins directly under federal oversight and eliminate what he called “egregious fees” in fiat-to-crypto on/off ramps.

On April 22nd, banking industry groups formally requested more time to review proposed rules related to the GENIUS Act. The American Bankers Association, the Bank Policy Institute, and two other associations wrote to the Treasury Department and the FDIC, stating that the rules – covering equivalency, issuer standards, and anti-money laundering – are closely linked to a separate framework still being developed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. They argued that a thorough assessment isn’t possible until that framework is finalized. The GENIUS Act was signed into law in July 2025 and will go into effect by January 18, 2027.

It wasn’t unexpected that banks reacted as they did, according to van Eck, who described the new law as a landmark piece of banking legislation. He explained that banks are more worried about customers potentially shifting their money to stablecoin platforms offering higher returns, which would reduce the profit banks make on deposits. In response, Agora applied for a national trust bank charter with the OCC on April 24th, allowing them to issue stablecoins directly under federal supervision, rather than waiting for complete regulations. Van Eck believes a federal charter would cut down on high fees for converting traditional money to cryptocurrency and enable Agora to offer services like safekeeping, regulatory compliance, and payment processing.

As crypto.news reported, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released its proposed rules for stablecoins in February 2026. These rules cover how stablecoins are created, backed by reserves, overseen, and redeemed. The public had 60 days to comment on the proposal, a period which ended on May 1st. Separately, the Treasury Department also proposed its own rules for smaller stablecoin issuers (those with less than $10 billion in value), with comments due by June 2nd. Banks are now trying to combine these three different sets of rules into one unified process. Experts believe this could postpone the implementation of the GENIUS Act by several months and give traditional banks more time to evaluate the competition from stablecoin issuers that aren’t banks before the rules are finalized.

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2026-05-01 19:32