Ripple has received final approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish the Ripple National Trust Bank, a federally supervised national trust bank, the company said on Monday.

The approval concludes a process that began when the OCC conditionally approved Ripple's application in December 2025, alongside those of Circle, Paxos, Fidelity Digital Assets and BitGo.

Once operational, the bank will manage the segregated reserves backing the stablecoin Ripple USD (RLUSD), act as collateral trustee for those reserves on behalf of RLUSD holders, and provide fiduciary digital asset custody services for enterprises.

RLUSD will still be issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company, Ripple's limited-purpose trust company regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services, meaning the stablecoin will now be under both state and federal oversight.

"For years, we've said crypto and banking work better together. Final approval for Ripple National Trust Bank is what that looks like in practice," said Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse in the statement. In a tweet, he added: "The revolution isn't happening outside the system. It's happening from within."

Launched in December 2024, RLUSD has a market capitalisation of roughly US$2.6 billion, according to CoinGecko. Ripple says the stablecoin is used across its payments network and as collateral on its Ripple Prime brokerage. BNY is the primary custodian of the stablecoin's reserves.

XRP, the cryptocurrency associated with Ripple, rose 0.5% over the past 24 hours to US$1.29, according to CoinGecko, making it one of only two top-10 coins by market capitalisation to post gains on the day, alongside Zcash.

The fight over crypto bank charters

The national trust charters the OCC has granted to crypto firms remain contested. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has argued, in a letter to Comptroller Jonathan Gould, that approvals for firms such as Coinbase and Ripple violated the National Bank Act. "These companies are effectively crypto-asset banks that want to dodge the core safeguards and obligations of being a bank," she wrote.

The Digital Chamber, a crypto industry trade group, has called on the OCC to "defend these charter approvals and continue developing clear supervisory expectations for trust banks."

Earlier this month, the Independent Community Bankers of America sued the OCC in federal court, arguing that the charters have become "a side door into the banking system for crypto companies" that bypass the capital requirements, consolidated supervision and FDIC insurance that bind traditional banks.

Ripple said it will continue working with the OCC, the NYDFS and other regulators as the bank begins operations and as the US rolls out the stablecoin framework under the GENIUS Act.

* Translated and edited with permission from Decrypt.

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