Circle said on July 10, 2026 that it received final approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A., a national trust bank that will operate as Circle National Trust. At opening the bank holds digital asset custody for Circle and its affiliates only. Management of the USDC reserves is planned for later, and custody for outside institutions is permitted but not scheduled.
What the OCC approved
According to Circle’s announcement, the bank will offer “fiduciary digital asset custody services for Circle and its affiliates” once it opens. The approved business plan goes further than the launch scope: the bank may eventually offer custody to “a limited number of institutional customers directly, focusing on banks” and other financial institutions. Reserve management for USDC is described as “planned as a future capability”, so the assets backing the coin stay outside the new bank for now.
Circle filed the application on June 30, 2025 and received conditional approval in December 2025. July 10 completes that sequence, and Circle is the first of the stablecoin trust charters conditionally approved in December 2025 to reach final approval.
What it means for fintechs and banks
For a fintech or bank holding USDC, the change is supervisory rather than operational. Custody for Circle and its affiliates will sit inside a national trust bank the OCC examines, while an outside institution that wants the same arrangement for its own balances has to wait for the institutional service the business plan permits. If reserve management follows, the assets backing USDC would move to a federally chartered custodian as well, which is the part of the plan with no date attached. Firms mapping who holds what in a stablecoin program can start with our guide to stablecoin infrastructure and the stablecoins archive.
What to watch
The release names no dates. Three items in it remain open: the bank’s opening, the extension of custody to institutional customers that the business plan allows, and reserve management as a future capability. Later charter decisions appear in stablecoin news.
