The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued its final GENIUS Act rule on 21 October 2026, dropping a proposed presumption against affiliate-routed stablecoin rewards while keeping the ban on issuers paying holders yield, the regulator’s announcement said. The rule takes effect 18 January 2027.
What changed and what did not
The withdrawn proposal would have presumed that an issuer paying interest or yield to an affiliate or related third party, which then arranged payments to holders simply for holding the coin, amounted to prohibited issuer yield. Comptroller Jonathan V. Gould said the agency had delivered the final rule ahead of schedule, and the OCC said it will instead apply the statute to the facts of each rewards arrangement, with no list of permitted or prohibited structures.
The core prohibition survives unchanged: issuers may not pay holders interest or yield solely for holding, using or retaining a payment stablecoin. The rule also blocks workarounds, stating that an issuer cannot escape the ban by paying an agent to make yield payments it could not make itself.
No grandfathering for existing programmes
Rewards programmes that predate the GENIUS Act face the same evaluation as new ones, and the OCC declined a de minimis safe harbour for small or incidental payments, saying the statute contains no such exemption. There is no cure period for violations, though the OCC said enforcement discretion will apply according to the circumstances.
The practical effect for exchanges is that rewards schemes now sit in a case-by-case zone: neither presumed illegal nor expressly permitted. The OCC anticipates that experience with these arrangements could support a later rule clarifying the yield prohibition.
Today marks the birth of a new industry having a federal framework for payment stablecoins in the digital age.
Jonathan V. Gould, Comptroller of the Currency, in a post on XGould posted the announcement under the agency’s account, calling the rule part of a push to grow the economy and lead what he described as the global digital currency revolution.
The rulebook is still incomplete
The rule covers permitted and foreign payment stablecoin issuers within the OCC’s jurisdiction, plus certain custody activities by OCC-supervised entities. Rules on the Bank Secrecy Act, anti-money laundering and sanctions are deferred to separate rulemaking coordinated with the Treasury, so the framework is not finished.
A separate OCC release will state when the agency begins accepting prospective issuers’ applications and waiver requests. Comment deadlines under the Paperwork Reduction Act run 30 days after Federal Register publication, and that date is not yet set.
For traders tracking cross-border stablecoin payment flows, the hard compliance date is 18 January 2027. Japan’s three megabanks completed their first joint yen stablecoin payment test earlier this month, a reminder that the reward economics around payment coins are being tested well outside the United States too.
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Saqib Iqbal
