CFTC Allows National Trust Banks to Issue Payment Stablecoins

The CFTC’s Market Participants Division (MPD), the unit responsible for overseeing the financial condition and operational resilience of derivatives market participants, issued an interpretive letter introducing a targeted change to the definition of a payment stablecoin.

The updated wording explicitly states that national trust banks may act as eligible issuers of such assets under the regulator’s current position. In the letter, the CFTC confirms that stablecoins issued by these banks, provided they meet reserve and disclosure requirements, may be used on par with other payment stablecoins under the margin collateral framework in derivatives markets.

According to the MPD letter, a payment stablecoin is defined as:

• a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin;
• issued by a state-regulated money transmitter, trust company, or a national trust bank;
• backed by reserves consisting exclusively of cash, U.S. Treasuries, or short-term U.S. Treasury repo transactions;
• with the issuer required to publish monthly attestations confirming the composition of reserves and their full correspondence to the amount of stablecoins in circulation.

After the GENIUS Act came into force, CFTC staff noted that payment stablecoins issued by national trust banks didn’t fall under the previously established definition. Specifically, a payment stablecoin was defined as a dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by a state-regulated money transmitter or trust company. National trust banks weren’t explicitly mentioned, which legally excluded them from the list of eligible issuers, as such banks aren’t subject to state-level regulation.

According to CFTC Chair Michael Selig, national trust banks are authorized to custody and issue payment stablecoins under licenses granted by the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). To avoid discrepancies between banking supervision and derivatives market regulation, the regulator decided to expand the list of permissible tokenized collateral. In Selig’s view, these banks continue to play a key role in the infrastructure of payment-related digital assets.

In 2025, the OCC allowed national banks to process risk-free crypto transactions, confirmed the right of national trust banks to provide non-fiduciary custodial services, and approved five applications for national trust bank status from entities specializing in digital asset operations.