OCC

A federal judge blocked Illinois from enforcing its interchange fee ban for taxes and tips against national banks and card networks after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's recent intervention materially altered the court's preemption analysis.

Lawmakers early on Monday voted to push the effective date of the law, which would ban interchange fees on the tax and tip portions of transactions, to July 1, 2027, marking the second delay as merchants and banks continue to battle in court. 

Joint guidance from the Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on managing model risk leaves many concerns about artificial intelligence, and especially agentic AI, for bankers to sort out themselves.

Cryptocurrency companies have rushed to apply for national trust charters from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency during the second Trump administration after remaining on the sidelines for years. Experts say the trust charters offer them scale, Fed access and legitimacy without the full regulatory burden of traditional banks.

An automated alert system auto-closed "a very high percentage" of suspicious-activity flags at the bank, the OCC said.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued a final rule saying that federal law trumps state mandates on interest in escrow accounts for national banks, wading into an ongoing court battle. 

The community bank trade group says crypto firms are combining stablecoin rules, Fed master account access and trust charters to replicate banking without bank rules.

Banking groups that sued the state of Illinois over its law barring banks from charging interchange fees on taxes and tips cheered an appeals court ruling remanding the law to a lower court and vowed to keep the law going into effect, which is slated for July 1.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, warned in a letter to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Thursday that its proposed rollback leaves regional banks dangerously unsupervised.

The measure, sent Thursday to the governor's desk, would mark the second state ban on interchange fees and could inform an ongoing bank-led legal challenge to a similar Illinois law.

Public comments on the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's GENIUS Act implementing regulations highlighted the rift between banks and crypto firms over the permissibility of yield on stablecoin holdings, an issue that has stalled crypto market structure legislation for months.

Even as they continue to press for additional changes, banks get some wins from the revised Basel capital framework and a ballpark estimate of their capital outlook for the next few years.

There's been an onslaught of nonbank financial technology company charter applications and approvals already this year.

Banks weighing stablecoin partnerships need to know whose playbook regulators will endorse before another major crypto theft tests the question.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Thursday finalized a rule lowering the community bank leverage ratio from 9% to 8% as well as extending compliance deadlines. 

The credit startup is seeking a limited-purpose charter from federal regulators through the Competitive Equality in Banking Act's credit card bank carveout.

The stablecoin provider recently applied for a national trust bank charter from the OCC after acquiring a New York trust charter last year.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency sent an interim final rule to the Office of Management and Budget that would preempt a controversial Illinois state law banning the collection of interchange fees on taxes and tips interchange.

After a nearly two-decade long "ice age" in which few new banking charters were granted, regulators have shrugged off a zero-failure mentality and are allowing some risk back into the system.

On-chain infrastructure is making idle balances obsolete. The OCC needs to act before banks lose the ability to compete in a market where consumers no longer tolerate below-market-rate returns.