America’s largest banking lobby is urging the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to slow crypto-related charter approvals, arguing Congress and regulators have not finished defining the rules these firms would operate under.

Charter approvals under unfinished rules

In a Wednesday comment letter to the OCC, the American Bankers Association said the agency should ensure safety-and-soundness standards are “well understood and upheld” and avoid measuring charter timelines against traditional benchmarks.

The ABA wrote:

“Be patient, not measure its application decisioning progress against traditional timelines, and allow each charter applicant’s regulatory responsibilities to come fully into view before moving a charter application forward.”

The letter cited conditional OCC trust bank charters pursued or held by major crypto firms including Circle, Ripple, BitGo, Paxos, Coinbase, and Nomura’s Laser Digital.

Fed access and ‘skipping the middle layer’

Anthony Agoshkov, co-founder of Marvel Capital, told Decrypt that national licensing and Federal Reserve access could change settlement rails.

Agoshkov said:

“Once these firms get Fed access and national licensing, we will be talking about skipping the whole middle layer—no SWIFT, no correspondent chains, just native, regulated settlement.”

Resolution risk and stablecoin yield fight

The ABA also pointed to 2022 failures including FTX and Celsius as examples of “novel business models” that could strain receivership and insolvency processes.

Separately, banking groups have pushed to restrict stablecoin yield, a fight that spilled into market-structure negotiations and led Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong to withdraw support for a bill.