OCC Conditionally Approves Three Trust Banks Built for Stablecoins and AI Agent Payments

The federal bank regulator just handed three crypto-native firms a foothold in the national banking system, and their business plans read like a map of where digital money is heading: stablecoin plumbing and payments made by AI agents.

On Friday, September 18, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted conditional approvals for Agora National Trust Bank and Catena Trust Bank, and cleared the conversion of Bastion Platforms Trust Company into a national trust bank, PYMNTS reported.

These are trust charters, not full commercial bank licenses. That distinction matters: the three cannot accept deposits or make loans. What they can do is operate stablecoin custody and wallets, run payment infrastructure, and issue white-label tokens under direct OCC supervision, which is the regulated status their would-be partners have been demanding.

Bastion's pitch is that it becomes the compliant back end for institutions that will not touch an unregulated fintech. "We can now be that regulated partner for all of the largest financial institutions in and outside of the U.S., who want to launch products here," CEO Nassim Eddequiouaq told the Wall Street Journal. Bastion issues white-label stablecoins and holds the reserves and customer wallets behind them. It already held a New York trust charter it acquired in early 2025, and raised $14.6 million in a round led by Coinbase Ventures, per Cointelegraph.

Catena is the most forward-leaning of the three. Its stated purpose is financial infrastructure for AI agents: accounts, payments, treasury functions, and controls over what an agent is allowed to do with money. "We're building from the ground up: deterministic policy enforcement, immutable audit trails, and verifiable agent identity," its site says. Agora, which applied back in April, runs the AUSD stablecoin and wants to build a full financial operating system for global businesses on top of the charter.

The three join a widening line at the OCC. Ripple is holding a conditional approval, while Circle and BitGo already have final charter sign-offs. The regulator said in August it had received 40 de novo applications in the prior 18 months, against 48 in the entire stretch from 2011 through 2024. That rush is the same one driving Revolut's push for a US national bank charter and the OCC charter fight involving Block and other builders, and it is reshaping which parts of banking the newcomers get to own.