Revolut, OpenReserve get preliminary US bank approval with crypto plans

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has granted preliminary, conditional approval for UK fintech giant Revolut and crypto-native infrastructure provider OpenReserve to establish full-fledged U.S. national bank charters. The decision marks a critical regulatory pivot, signaling a willingness by federal bank supervisors to absorb digital asset rail operations directly into the primary federal banking ecosystem. Unlike state-chartered trust companies or partner-bank arrangements, a full OCC national bank charter grants both entities direct access to the Federal Reserve’s master account services, enabling seamless fiat clearing and settlement alongside native cryptocurrency and stablecoin architectures. Technically, the approval paves the way for a deeper convergence of core banking systems and distributed ledger technology. OpenReserve's operational model focuses heavily on programmatic stablecoin reserve management, utilizing smart contract logic to automate liquidity rebalancing and real-time auditing of yield-bearing short-term Treasuries. Revolut, meanwhile, plans to integrate high-throughput cryptocurrency brokerage, self-hosted wallet interoperability, and stablecoin payment rails natively into its consumer and commercial banking stack. To achieve this, both institutions must deploy enterprise-grade cryptographic key management systems—leveraging Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) and threshold Multi-Party Computation (MPC)—that satisfy strict OCC safety and soundness standards while maintaining low-latency interaction with public blockchains. From a financial and risk perspective, bringing crypto-focused operations under OCC oversight enforces rigorous asset-liability management (ALM) protocols and strict capital adequacy ratios under Basel III standards. For stablecoin operations, this mitigates structural run risk by mandating transparent, high-quality liquid assets held directly within federal depositary frameworks or top-tier cash equivalents, largely bypassing opaque third-party commercial paper setups. However, this hybrid framework introduces complex operational burdens. Both firms will be subject to continuous federal examination regarding Anti-Money Laundering (AML) protocols, automated sanctions-screening heuristics at the transaction level, and stringent cyber-resilience benchmarks designed to prevent cross-contagion between traditional insured deposits and volatile digital asset liquidity pools. Market sentiment across both Wall Street and the Web3 ecosystem is cautiously optimistic. Institutional traders view the OCC's conditional nod as a sign that regulatory execution is replacing blanket enforcement, potentially unlocking sidelined institutional capital that requires full federal banking protections before engaging with on-chain assets. Conversely, crypto-native firms recognize that while the compliance burden is high, securing a national charter provides a defensible moat against the ongoing "de-risking" trends seen among traditional intermediary banks. If Revolut and OpenReserve successfully satisfy the OCC’s final pre-opening conditions, their entry will likely pressure established money-center banks to accelerate their own tokenized deposit and on-chain treasury roadmaps.