Modern Treasury seeks US trust bank charter for digital asset custody

Modern Treasury wants a bank. More precisely, it wants a narrow, federally chartered trust bank built to hold digital assets for its customers.

The San Francisco payments infrastructure company filed an application with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) on October 5, 2026. The proposed entity would be called Modern Treasury National Trust Bank. Its job would be custody of digital assets, including stablecoins, plus related fiat services.

What Modern Treasury is actually asking for

The application is for a limited-purpose national trust bank. National trust bank charters issued by the OCC permit firms to perform fiduciary and custody functions under federal supervision, while prohibiting deposit-taking, lending, and FDIC insurance.

The plan pairs digital asset custody with fiat services. The goal, according to the company, is to let customers manage both digital and traditional currencies from a single platform.

The scope has clear limits. The proposed trust bank would not engage in lending. It would also not issue stablecoins.

The trust bank would also be kept separate from the company’s existing payment service provider (PSP) business. The current payments operation stays where it is. The trust bank would be its own regulated entity.

The Beam deal and the CEO’s case

The application follows a product shift inside the company. Modern Treasury added stablecoin capabilities to its payments platform through its acquisition of Beam in October 2025.

Matt Marcus, Modern Treasury’s CEO and co-founder, framed the filing as a natural extension of that stablecoin integration. He said the charter would bring direct federal oversight to the company’s digital asset custody.

Stablecoins are “foundational economic infrastructure for the future,” Marcus said.

None of this is live yet. The filing only kicks off the OCC’s review process. Modern Treasury cannot begin operating the trust bank until it receives the required approvals.

A crowded line at the OCC

Modern Treasury is far from alone. Circle, Paxos and Ripple are among the firms that have pursued national trust charters from the OCC. The rush has been a notable trend across digital assets and fintech since late 2025, with conditional approvals granted between 2025 and 2026 confirming a growing acceptance of supervised infrastructure for digital assets.

Circle and Paxos are stablecoin issuers. Ripple is a payments and crypto firm. Modern Treasury comes from the opposite direction: a traditional payments infrastructure company that has processed transactions worth hundreds of billions of dollars and is now folding stablecoins into its existing product.

What this means for stablecoins and the businesses using them

If approved, a business could hold stablecoins and fiat under one federally supervised roof, without bolting together separate providers.

The decision to avoid lending and issuance keeps the risk profile simpler. Separating the trust bank from the PSP business walls off the new regulated custody activity from the existing payments operation.