Ripple has received final approval to launch its own U.S. national trust bank, a major step that pulls one of crypto’s biggest players further into the regulated traditional financial system. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has approved Ripple National Trust Bank (RNTB), chief executive Brad Garlinghouse announced on X late Monday.
Ripple logo (Credits: CoinDesk)
The approval means Ripple can now run a specialised bank under U.S. federal supervision. The bank will manage the reserves backing Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin and provide regulated custody services for institutional clients, while RLUSD itself will remain issued by Ripple’s New York-regulated unit.
Ripple national trust bank approval: what it covers
RLUSD, launched in December 2024, has grown to about $2.5 billion in market value and is backed by dollar deposits, U.S. government securities and other cash-like assets, according to CoinDesk. A national trust charter gives Ripple a stronger foundation for that stablecoin and for the institutional products it is building across payments, custody and capital markets, Garlinghouse said.
“For years, we’ve said crypto and banks work better together. Final approval for Ripple National Trust Bank is what that looks like in practice,” Garlinghouse said in the press release. “We’ve spent over a decade building regulated financial infrastructure that institutions can actually use at scale.”
A long road from application to final approval
Ripple first applied for the banking licence in July 2025, and the OCC gave it conditional approval that December before signing off fully this week. The timeline reflects how regulators have approached crypto firms seeking bank-style charters: slowly, with conditions, and only after extended scrutiny.
The approval is consistent with Garlinghouse’s long-running pitch that crypto companies should build products banks and big institutions can actually use, rather than operating entirely outside the traditional system. Ripple describes itself as a fintech company building blockchain and crypto tools for cross-border transactions and tokenisation.
For the wider market, the decision is another sign of convergence between digital assets and traditional finance. A federally supervised trust bank run by a crypto firm is no longer a hypothetical — it is now an operating reality, with custody and stablecoin reserves at its centre. What remains to be seen is how quickly institutional clients adopt the new bank’s services, and whether other crypto firms follow Ripple through the same regulatory door.
Also Read: Canada Opens Consultation on Draft Stablecoin Rules, Maintains Ban on Yields | Bitcoin Bounces Back to Nearly $82,000 as Gold Recovers and Yen Gives Up Gains
Source: CoinDesk — read the full story there.