The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) said community banks may assess whether a subsidiary could issue payment stablecoins, with obligations calibrated to each issuer’s size and risk.
Speaking Tuesday to the Ohio Bankers League, Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan V. Gould said smaller banks should have a place in evolving payment services. He said banks and nonbank issuers would face the same standards, an approach intended to keep smaller institutions from being placed at a disadvantage.
Gould said the requirements should reflect the risks and scale of each issuer rather than impose one compliance model on all firms. That design, he said, would let community banks consider participation without facing demands that only the largest institutions could manage.
He tied the approach to the Trump administration’s Community Bank Comeback, describing it as a response to what he called years of overregulation. Gould said the OCC wants community lenders to focus more of their work on customers and local economic activity.
The comments address how community banks may participate under the OCC’s GENIUS Act rule for payment stablecoins.
In Ohio, the OCC oversees 65 institutions with $5.6 trillion in assets, according to its release. The group ranges from some of the country’s largest banks to small community lenders.
Gould also invoked Ohio’s banking history. Salmon P. Chase, an Ohio native who served as Treasury secretary under President Abraham Lincoln, helped establish the national banking system during the Civil War, the OCC said.
The agency also cited First National Bank of McConnelsville, which opened in 1863, the year the OCC was established. It began with $75,000 in capital and is now the oldest national bank to retain both its original name and OCC charter, according to the release. The OCC described Ohio banks as having adapted to changes in finance while responding to customer needs.
