The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the country's bank supervisory agency, issued a final rule on October 21 to implement the stablecoin law known as the GENIUS Act. The final rule and the GENIUS Act will take effect together on January 18, 2027.
The rule applies to OCC-supervised payment stablecoin issuers, certain foreign issuers and some custody activities. It establishes requirements for redemption reserve assets, risk management, audits and reporting, and capital. As a general rule, an issuer must initiate the transfer of redemption proceeds or credit the amount to a customer account with the issuer within two business days after receiving a redemption request that meets necessary requirements, including customer identification.
The prohibition on issuers paying interest or yield solely in exchange for holding, using or maintaining a stablecoin remains in place. Issuers also may not circumvent this prohibition by effectively paying interest through a third party.
What changed is the method for assessing rewards paid by affiliates or related third parties. The proposed rule issued in February would have initially treated rewards paid under certain arrangements between issuers and those parties as interest paid by the issuer. To rebut that determination, the issuer would have had to provide evidence that the reward was not its own interest payment. The final rule removed this presumption. Instead of adopting a uniform list of permitted or prohibited examples, the OCC will apply the statutory language to the actual terms of each arrangement.
Anti-money laundering and sanctions provisions will be developed separately in consultation with the Treasury Department. The OCC will also announce in a separate press release when it will begin accepting charter applications and exemption requests.