Stripe-owned Bridge acquires trust charter for stablecoins

Another trust charter has been granted to a stablecoin issuer in the midst of back-and-forth between regulators and trade groups over the subject and continued volatility in the cryptocurrency market.

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Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure provider owned by payments company Stripe, received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust bank charter on Tuesday. 

Once fully approved, according to the company, the charter will enable Bridge to directly operate stablecoin products and services under federal oversight in line with the stablecoin bill known as the GENIUS Act passed into law last summer.

International business payments fintech Payoneer also announced its plans on the same day to launch stablecoin offerings powered by Bridge.

“In partnering with Bridge, we’re bringing stablecoin into Payoneer’s trusted financial stack,” said Payoneer CEO John Caplan in a statement. “This is about rethinking how money moves across borders for real businesses, not as an experiment, but as a scalable financial capability.”

Payoneer is planning to launch its stablecoin offerings within its platform in select markets in mid-2026, according to a company statement.

“The news of Stripe’s Bridge getting a national trust charter for stablecoin products, and its partnership with Payoneer, is positive for the sector overall,” Nic Puckrin, co-founder of crypto media outlet Coin Bureau, told American Banker. “It’s a sign of the continued integration of digital assets with traditional finance, and signals the growing importance of stablecoin infrastructure for the wider financial ecosystem. It’s also a signal of regulatory stability at a time when some aspects of stablecoin regulation are being debated as part of the CLARITY Act.”

Bridge also manages deposits for the neobank Dakota, which announced its stablecoin shift last month and is using Bridge’s infrastructure to issue its own stablecoin.

Bridge initially applied for a national trust charter in October of last year, and the application prompted the Independent Community Bankers of America, or ICBA, to issue a letter to the OCC in November opposing the application on the grounds of administrative-procedural and statutory concerns from the trade group.

“By offering stablecoins to consumers, Bridge is attempting to offer a product that is a functional substitute for demand deposits without becoming subject to the laws and regulations that bind other banks, including the Bank Holding Company Act,” ICBA Vice President and Regulatory Counsel Mickey Marshall wrote in the letter at the time.

Comptroller Jonathan Gould defended the agency’s consideration of fintechs for trust charters in an interview with American Banker later in November, and a month later the OCC granted conditional trust charter approvals to five other digital asset companies.

Bridge’s trust charter is entering the digital assets space with the buffer of relative stablecoin stability, even as crypto prices have been dropping.

Puckrin said that stablecoins have remained stable in recent months in comparison to more volatile digital assets such as bitcoin. According to data from digital assets analytics platform DeFiLlama, the market cap for stablecoins is about $308 billion as of Thursday.

“Historically, stablecoins typically benefit when higher-risk assets sell off, as they act as a liquidity buffer,” he said. “The crypto market downturn underscores the bifurcation that has been happening in the digital asset space for some time, between the more speculative assets that are highly sensitive to macro conditions and the financial infrastructure layer that continues to be built in the background. I expect this will only continue as blockchain technology becomes more integrated with existing financial applications.”