Stablecoin infrastructure provider Bastion announced on Friday that it has received preliminary conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for a United States trust bank charter, marking a major regulatory milestone for the firm as it integrates deeper into the traditional financial landscape.
According to a news release issued on Friday, the new charter introduces federal supervision from the OCC to complement the state-level licenses that Bastion already holds. However, the proposed institution will operate under specific limitations typical of trust banks, meaning it will not be permitted to accept traditional retail deposits or issue commercial loans in the manner of a conventional commercial bank. Instead, the entity will focus strictly on specialized digital asset services, governance, and institutional-grade infrastructure.
To be licensed as Bastion Platforms National Trust Company, the firm plans to leverage the federal framework to offer stablecoin custody solutions, specialized digital wallets, payment infrastructure, and white-label issuance capabilities, all consolidated within a single federally regulated entity. This unified structure is designed to provide corporate clients and financial institutions with a compliant, highly secure gateway for digital asset integration.
Nassim Eddequiouaq, CEO of Bastion, emphasized the changing perception and utility of digital assets in the modern economy, noting that stablecoins have effectively transitioned from an experimental emerging technology into foundational financial infrastructure. According to Eddequiouaq, this evolution demands an entirely different standard of trust, institutional governance, and regulatory rigor than what was previously expected of early-stage crypto firms.
The milestone follows a deliberate trajectory toward federal oversight for the company, which has been building its regulatory compliance framework since acquiring its New York trust charter in February 2025. By pursuing federal authorization, Bastion joins a growing cohort of digital asset infrastructure providers seeking to bridge the gap between decentralized finance technologies and federally supervised banking standards.
The path toward this regulatory advancement has been heavily supported by prominent venture capital firms and major global technology corporations. In September 2025, Cointelegraph reported that Bastion successfully raised $14.6 million in a funding round led by Coinbase Ventures. The strategic round also saw participation from Japanese tech giant Sony, the corporate investment subsidiary of South Korean electronics leader Samsung, the crypto-focused investment arm of prominent venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and specialized crypto venture capital firm Hashed.
Bastion’s successful bid for preliminary approval places it alongside several other high-profile digital asset and blockchain firms that are actively navigating the OCC charter process. Ripple has previously received conditional approval for a similar trust bank charter, while industry heavyweights Circle and BitGo have successfully navigated the process to achieve final approval from federal regulators.
At the same time, other major industry players are working their way through the regulatory pipeline. Cointelegraph has previously reported that Kraken’s parent company, Payward, crypto infrastructure provider ZeroHash, and Jack Dorsey’s payments company Block have all submitted applications to obtain U.S. national bank charters. These sequential moves underscore a broader industry-wide push toward regulatory maturation, as leading digital asset firms seek to align their operations with federal banking standards to better serve institutional clients, payment processors, and global enterprises.
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