Stripe Gains Approval for National Trust Bank

- Stripe's move follows its February 2025 acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge for $1.1 billion. The national trust bank charter will authorize Bridge to provide digital asset custody, stablecoin issuance, and reserve management services under direct federal oversight. - This approval places Stripe in a group of other crypto-native firms that recently received conditional national trust bank charters from the OCC, including Circle, Ripple, Paxos, BitGo, and Fidelity Digital Assets. - The SEC's recent guidance for broker-dealers holding "payment stablecoins" reduces the required capital haircut from a prohibitive 100% to just 2%. This aligns their treatment with less risky assets like money market funds, making it far more capital-efficient for institutional players to hold and transact with stablecoins. - Beyond the bank charter, Stripe is also developing its own Ethereum-compatible L1 blockchain named "Tempo" in partnership with Paradigm. Unlike chains from competitors Circle (Arc) and Tether (Plasma), Tempo is designed to be "stablecoin-neutral," supporting multiple stablecoins for gas and payments. - The push by crypto and fintech firms into federally chartered banking has faced resistance from traditional finance. Groups like the Bank Policy Institute and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition have opposed Stripe's application, arguing it could create systemic risk and allow the firm to sidestep tougher regulations. - A national trust bank charter is more limited than a full bank charter; it primarily allows the entity to conduct fiduciary activities like asset custody but not to take deposits or make loans in the way a traditional bank can. - Bridge was founded in 2022 by former Coinbase Head of Consumer Products, Zach Abrams, and Sean Yu. Prior to its acquisition by Stripe, Bridge had raised $58 million and was valued at $200 million in a Series A round in March 2024.