On October 21, 2026, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced its final GENIUS Act rule, effective January 18, 2027. The agency removed a proposed rebuttable presumption concerning stablecoin rewards, but declined to presume that rewards programs operating before the law comply with it.
The final rule retains the OCC’s authority to address evasion of the yield prohibition. Issuers and their distribution partners face scrutiny of how each payment arrangement works. The agency also rejected broad safe harbors for DeFi arrangements, white-label partners and payments for services.
Indirect payments remain subject to the ban
The statutory prohibition covers issuer-paid interest or yield solely in connection with holding, using or retaining a payment stablecoin. The OCC’s explanation distinguishes between who makes a payment and what the payment is for. Both bear on whether an indirect payment falls within the prohibition.
An agent paying holders on an issuer’s behalf can fall within the ban. The rule gives the example of an agent making interest or yield payments solely in connection with holding, using or retaining the stablecoin. In that arrangement, the issuer pays the holder through the agent.
An indirect payment made partly for other reasons can fall outside the statutory language. The word “solely” limits the prohibition. The OCC says the facts and circumstances determine whether a payment through an intermediary is solely for holding, using or retaining a stablecoin, or at least partly for something else. It gives no general approval to payments routed through intermediaries.
With the proposed rebuttable presumption removed, the OCC says it will apply the statute to each arrangement based on all relevant facts and circumstances.
The yield prohibition applies equally to institutional and retail holders. A commenter had proposed letting issuers pass reserve yield to institutional holders while withholding it from retail holders. The OCC rejected that distinction because the GENIUS Act does not draw it.
Existing rewards and DeFi receive no safe harbor
The rule addresses the argument that Congress knew about existing rewards programs when it passed the law. “The fact that Congress may have had notice of these rewards programs does not necessarily imply that Congress endorsed them as permissible,” the OCC writes. Congress could have supplied a safe harbor, the agency says, but did not. Programs that predate the statute receive no separate exemption.
The agency says the facts of each DeFi arrangement may bear significantly on whether it was entered into to evade the yield prohibition. It declined requests for a general safe harbor. Operating through DeFi gives an arrangement no category-wide assurance that it complies.
Payments for genuine services get more specific treatment, though the OCC adopted no explicit safe harbor. Absent contrary facts, the agency says payments for bona fide services generally would not be prohibited because they generally are not interest or yield paid solely for holding, using or retaining a stablecoin. The nature of the service and the payment remain relevant to that assessment.
White-label partners also receive no safe harbor. The OCC says payments to and from these partners may be more likely than other payments to be made on an issuer’s behalf. It cited that risk in rejecting a broadly applicable exemption for those relationships.
Commenters sought a de minimis exception for small or incidental payments, including payments that do not scale with the recipient’s stablecoin holdings. The OCC declined because the statutory yield prohibition does not contemplate such an exemption.
The agency also rejects reliance on the name attached to a payment. “Interest does not stop being interest merely because it is given a different name,” the rule says. The OCC bases its assessment on the payment’s economic substance.
Deposits and implementation follow separate paths
Tokenized deposits sit outside this yield prohibition. The OCC confirms that the statutory definition of a payment stablecoin excludes deposits, including deposits recorded using distributed ledger technology. The ban therefore does not extend to interest paid on deposits in tokenized form.
The final rule provides no cure period for violations of the yield prohibition. A commenter requested one; the OCC declined and said it would exercise enforcement discretion based on the facts and circumstances.
Beyond rewards, the rule covers permitted and foreign payment stablecoin issuers under OCC jurisdiction, together with certain custody activities conducted by OCC-supervised entities. Bank Secrecy Act, anti-money laundering and sanctions provisions are reserved for a separate rulemaking coordinated with Treasury.
The rule also sets redemption obligations for permitted issuers. Their policies must give clear and conspicuous procedures and state that timely redemption may not exceed two business days following the requested redemption date. Discretionary limits can be imposed only by the OCC or, for a state-qualified issuer, the OCC, Federal Reserve or applicable state regulator.
Large redemption requests trigger a supervisory notification. An issuer receiving requests exceeding 10 percent of the outstanding issuance value of any stablecoin brand in a single 24-hour period must notify the OCC through its supervisory office within 24 hours. The threshold is measured against the affected brand’s issuance value.
An issuer experiencing requests above that threshold may ask the OCC for an extension of the redemption timeframe. The agency can grant or deny the request at its discretion, or impose discretionary redemption limits under the statute. An extension requires a regulatory decision; crossing the notification threshold alone gives the issuer no automatic extension.
Required disclosures include purchase and redemption fees and a website linking to the monthly reserve composition report. Issuers must also disclose that payment stablecoins are not legal tender or government-guaranteed, are not deposits, and carry neither FDIC deposit insurance nor National Credit Union Administration share insurance.
The OCC says it will announce separately when it begins accepting and processing applications and waiver requests from prospective permitted payment stablecoin issuers.
