TL;DR
- OCC issued a 376-page GENIUS Act proposal with a 60-day comment window, banning OCC-supervised payment-stablecoin issuers from paying yield for simply holding tokens.
- Rule adds a rebuttable presumption against issuer-to-affiliate reward loops, but allows merchant discounts and non-affiliate whitelabel profit sharing for everyday use cases.
- Proposal may clear the CLARITY logjam by anchoring a no-yield baseline, covers certain foreign issuers and reserve custody, and leaves BSA/AML and OFAC to Treasury.
U.S. banking regulators are moving to defuse one of crypto’s most persistent policy fights: whether payment stablecoins should pay yield. The OCC’s newly published GENIUS proposal draws a hard line on interest-like rewards. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released a 376-page draft rule to implement the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act and opened it for public comment for 60 days from its publication. If finalized as drafted, OCC-supervised issuers would be barred from paying any interest or yield tied solely to holding, using, or retaining a payment stablecoin.
How the GENIUS framework redraws the stablecoin playbook
The draft goes beyond the statute by targeting common workarounds. It introduces a rebuttable presumption that an issuer is violating the yield ban if it pays yield to an affiliate or “related third party” and that entity then pays yield to the issuer’s stablecoin holders. Issuers can try to rebut the presumption by submitting written materials, but the OCC stresses the close nexus between issuer payments and end-holder yield and frames such structures as highly likely attempts to evade the law. The proposal carves out merchant-funded discounts and allows non-affiliate whitelabel profit sharing in practice.
That structure could cool the separate debate over “stablecoin rewards” in market-structure legislation. Drafts of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 have wrestled with whether digital-asset service providers should be allowed to pay yield or rewards on payment stablecoin balances, a point that has already created friction with industry stakeholders such as Coinbase. By using GENIUS implementation to prohibit yield at the issuer level, the framework sets a no-yield baseline for compliant payment stablecoins. Thania Charmani said this rulemaking may let CLARITY proceed without the yield provision, and clarify what exchanges can offer.
The framework also widens the lens to who is covered and what is left for later. It sets operating standards for permitted U.S. stablecoin issuers and certain foreign payment stablecoin entities under OCC supervision, and addresses custody activities tied to stablecoin reserves and related services. Notably absent are Bank Secrecy Act, AML, and OFAC compliance provisions, which the OCC said will be handled separately in coordination with the U.S. Treasury, sequencing rulemaking. Comments will inform the final rule. Comptroller Jonathan Gould said the goal is stablecoins that can “flourish in a safe and sound manner.”
