Ripple gets a final go-ahead to launch its own U.S. national trust bank

Ripple, a fintech company building blockchain and crypto for cross-border transactions, and tokenization, can now run a specialized bank under U.S. federal supervision.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the regulator that oversees national banks, has approved Ripple National Trust Bank (RNTB), Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced on X late Monday.

In other words, one of crypto’s biggest players now has a traditional banking-style license, signaling that digital assets are being pulled further into the regulated traditional financial system. Ripple first applied for the banking license in July 2025, and the OCC gave it conditional approval that December before signing off fully this week.

The approval is consistent with Garlinghouse’s long-running pitch that crypto companies should build products that banks and big institutions can actually use.

“For years, we’ve said crypto and banks work better together. Final approval for Ripple National Trust Bank is what that looks like in practice,” Garlinghouse said in the press release. “We’ve spent over a decade building regulated financial infrastructure that institutions can actually use at scale. A national trust charter gives us an even stronger foundation for RLUSD and the institutional products we’re building across payments, custody and capital markets.”

The RNTB will be tasked with managing the reserves backing Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin. These reserves are essentially real money and assets that provide the token its value.

The bank will also act as a trustee for these reserves and offer regulated custody services, which means it will safely hold digital assets for big companies as they use crypto in payments, trading, and treasury management.