Stripe subsidiary Bridge has received conditional approval for a national trust bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the company said Tuesday in a blog post.
A search of the OCC’s database shows Bridge’s application, filed in October, was conditionally approved Feb. 12.
Under such a license, Bridge would be allowed to issue stablecoins, custody digital assets and manage reserves with direct oversight by the OCC.
The charter “positions Bridge to help enterprises, fintechs, crypto businesses, and financial institutions build with digital dollars inside a clear federal framework,” the company said Tuesday.
Bridge added that its compliance framework is “GENIUS ready,” a reference to the acronym for the law passed last year creating stablecoin guardrails.
“Now achieving a national trust bank charter will provide our customers the regulatory backbone they need to build with stablecoins confidently and at scale,” Bridge said.
There’s no set timeline by which Bridge could expect to achieve final OCC approval. But Erebor Bank, which applied last June for a full-service national banking charter, spent about four months in the “conditional approval” phase before getting a final green light.
Bridge’s conditional approval follows a spate of similar go-aheads the OCC gave stablecoin hopefuls in December. The regulator that month conditionally approved Circle Internet Group, Ripple, Paxos Trust, BitGo and Fidelity Digital Assets for national trust bank charters.
That, in turn, likely spurred other firms, such as the Trump family-led World Liberty Financial and Nomura spinoff Laser Digital, to apply for the trust bank charter.
At least one banking trade group signaled its disapproval of the uptick in charter activity. The Bank Policy Institute in October accused digital asset firms applying for the trust charter of “not planning to operate genuine trust companies.”
“Endorsing this pathway and allowing firms to choose a lighter regulatory touch while offering bank-like products could blur the statutory boundary of what it means to be a ‘bank,’ heighten systemic risk and undermine the credibility of the national banking charter itself,” BPI warned the OCC.
Paige Pidano Paridon, the trade group’s co-head of regulatory affairs, said digital asset firms should seek full-service national banking charters rather than limited-purpose trust licenses if they want to engage in traditional banking activities.
“BPI supports efforts to bring innovative new products and services into the regulated ecosystem and agrees that digital assets have a role to play in the U.S. financial system, provided that they are subject to the same rules and responsibilities as every other chartered institution engaging in the same activities,” Pidano Paridon said.
However, Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould in December called the swell in charter activity a “return to the norm.” The OCC received 18 charter applications in 2025. That includes applications for trust charters, as well as full-service national licenses.
Fintechs Mercury Technologies and Bunq applied for the latter in December and January, respectively. Brazilian challenger Nubank last month received conditional OCC approval for the full-service charter.
