OCC Issues First Final Rule Under the GENIUS Act, Effective 18 January 2027

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced on 21 October 2026 a final rule implementing the GENIUS Act, the 2025 US payment stablecoin law. According to the OCC, the rule “establishes requirements for permitted payment stablecoin issuers and foreign payment stablecoin issuers under the OCC's jurisdiction, as well as certain custody activities conducted by OCC-supervised entities.”

The OCC says the rule covers all the regulations it must write under the Act except those on the Bank Secrecy Act, anti-money laundering and OFAC sanctions, which will follow in a separate rulemaking coordinated with Treasury. It states that “the final rule and the GENIUS Act take effect on January 18, 2027”, 18 months after the Act was enacted on 18 July 2025.

Applications are not open yet. The OCC will announce in a separate news release when it begins accepting applications and waiver requests from prospective permitted payment stablecoin issuers. OCC Bulletin 2026-52 puts revised weekly and quarterly reporting forms out for public comment; subject to OMB approval, they would apply from the 25 January 2027 (weekly) and 31 March 2027 (quarterly) report dates.

The rule applies only to entities under the OCC's jurisdiction. Rules from Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, the NCUA and FinCEN remain at the stages listed on VASP Tracker's GENIUS Act rulemaking page, most of them still proposals.

Why it matters: this is the first final rule from a federal banking regulator under the Act, and it sets the OCC's requirements less than three months before the effective date. A later deadline is unchanged: from 18 July 2028, three years after enactment (our calculation), digital asset service providers may not offer or sell a payment stablecoin to a person in the United States unless a permitted payment stablecoin issuer issued it.