OCC Issues First GENIUS Act Final Rule, Leaving Stablecoin Rewards in Limbo

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has published the first final rule implementing the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, establishing the regulatory framework under which national banks, trusts, and foreign firms will issue payment stablecoins in the United States. The rule takes effect on 18 January and covers the end-to-end issuance process, custody arrangements, and third-party relationships with exchanges. It is the first of several agency rules required to fully implement the Act, with other federal regulators still drafting their portions, including the Bank Secrecy Act components assigned to other Treasury arms.

The most operationally consequential question the rule raises without fully resolving concerns stablecoin rewards programmes. The GENIUS Act prohibits payments made “solely in connection with the holding, use, or retention” of a payment stablecoin, a formulation the OCC declines to illustrate with examples or safe harbours. Instead, the agency signals it will assess each arrangement on its own facts, while noting that the word “solely” implies some daylight: a reward made at least partly for reasons beyond passive holding may fall outside the ban. Pre-existing rewards programmes at exchanges receive no grandfathering; operators such as Coinbase, PayPal, and Kraken, which run well-established stablecoin incentive schemes, will each need individual OCC sign-off.

The practical effect is that the crypto exchange sector enters a period of case-by-case regulatory negotiation rather than receiving the cleaner statutory clarification the industry had sought. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the rule as providing “a clear, practical foundation for private-sector innovation,” though from an operator’s perspective the yield question remains the most commercially sensitive unresolved piece. Market participants will watch how the OCC handles its first batch of programme reviews to understand where the “solely” threshold sits in practice.