US Treasury sets out state stablecoin certification procedures under GENIUS Act

The US Treasury has released interim procedural rules governing how state regulators must apply for certification that their stablecoin regimes are substantially similar to the federal framework established by the GENIUS Act. The rules, issued on behalf of the Stablecoin Certification Review Committee, a body comprising the Treasury Secretary, the Federal Reserve Chair, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman, took effect on 30 September. Certifications will not, however, be accepted until outstanding paperwork approvals are completed.

These procedures are administrative rather than substantive: they define the application forms and review steps but say nothing about the actual criteria for substantial similarity. That more consequential rule was proposed by Treasury in April and has attracted resistance from state regulators; it remains a proposal, not a final rule. The procedural release is therefore best read as framework plumbing rather than a signal that the certification regime is operationally open.

The timing pressure is real. The GENIUS Act gives states until 18 January 2028 to submit initial certifications, one year from the Act’s effective date. With no federal regulator having finalised its own GENIUS Act rules, state regulators face the prospect of a closing compliance window against standards that are not yet settled. That dynamic appears to be a central source of the pushback Treasury encountered on the April proposal, and it remains unresolved.